Thursday - December 08, 2016

Kingdom Come - Video Update

by Silver, 21:53

The developers of Kingdom Come: Deliverance show us the internal Alpha.

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We happily present the latest development progresses and status of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. In this new video, we delve into the internal Alpha which provides a good overview about the final game. Learn about various details and features of the game and take a listen to the epic sound of Kingdom Come: Deliverance https://soundcloud.com/warhorse_studi...

Thursday - December 01, 2016

Kingdom Come - Sequel planned

Kingdom Come: Deliverance developer already has sequel planned

First game without concrete launch date in 2017.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is Warhorse Studios' incoming medieval RPG which favours realism over fantasy. From what we've seen so far it looks impressive—a fact which helped it accrue over £1.1 million on Kickstarter in early 2014, having asked for just £300,000. It's due at some point in 2017, however it appears the developer already has plans beyond the incoming game's release.

As part of its Kickstarter campaign video, Warhorse co-founder Daniel Vávra suggested Kingdom Come: Deliverance would be split into three acts—incorporating a staggered release schedule, each adding new features (the first, for example, was said to offer a 9km squared map with 30 hours of gameplay). The scope of the game has since changed, most likely down to its crowdfunding success, and will now come as one complete package.

Wednesday - November 30, 2016

Kingdom Come - Preview @PCGamesN

by Silver, 21:14

PCGamesN previews Kingdom Come: Deliverance and wonders if it will deliver a true roleplaying experience.

Our demo starts in the small village of Stříbrná Skalice, mere hours before it's invaded. Unbeknown to our protagonist Henry, King Sigismund of Hungary has declared war on Bohemia, hoping to topple the region's incompetent king. Ignorance is bliss however, and with the prospect of war merely a rumour in Skalice, Henry is commanded by his father to collect a debt from the town drunk, Kunesh.

As Henry runs through the village's impressively rendered fields, what immediately strikes me is the complete lack of objective markers on-screen. Running about the village searching for Kunesh, players only have the vague directions from Henry's father to go on. In this game, no characters are marked out as more important than any other, meaning players have to treat everyone they see as a potential person of interest. With no arrows or glowing NPCs to guide you, the only way to reach your destination is by memorising directions and talking to those around you, creating a more authentic role-playing experience.

"We wanted to make everything realistic, or at least believable," Tobias explains.

After bothering a few villagers, Henry eventually discovers a small house on the outskirts of the fields. A bearded behemoth of a man sits on a chair outside - Kunesh. Upon Henry's approach Kunesh immediately recognises him and refuses to pay his debt. As you'd expect from an RPG, it's up to the player to choose how they deal with the situation. Henry has three choices - he can either attempt to reason with Kunesh and persuade him to pay his debt, bloody his hands and try and beat Kunesh into submission or thirdly, go back to daddy and get help. Built like a ton of bricks and standing a good foot taller than our weedy protagonist, challenging the man to a fist fight probably isn't the most sensible option.

Tuesday - November 29, 2016

Kingdom Come - Abusing the Peasants

Other fun activities in Kingdom Come include getting drunk whenever you quicksave, because the only way to quicksave is to take a swig of a particularly heady local liquor, which means that overly prudent players risk spending half the game with a crippling hangover. Oh, and if you're really at a loss for direction, you might while away a few hours reducing well-adjusted villagers to sickly introverts by poisoning the cheese, starting brawls at all their favourite watering holes and stealing their fishing equipment. From a distance, Warhorse's much-postponed open worlder can seem rather dour, obsessed with historical accuracy and depth of simulation to a degree that makes you wonder whether this is a game or an interactive monument to a period. But somewhere beneath the boiled leather jerkin of this dragonless Skyrim tribute, there's some of the farce and fanciful nature of a first-person Fable reboot struggling for air.

The period in question is the early 15th century, and you are the whey-faced sprog of a humble blacksmith, scraping a living in the shadow of a castle wall. An hour or so into the prologue, your entire family will be put to the sword by the Hungarian army. Cue a heroic struggle to restore the rightful ruler to the throne. At the outset, however, the task at hand is simply to shop for beer and charcoal, pick up a crossguard from a merchant at the castle and track down a belligerent drunk who owes your dad money.

Tuesday - October 18, 2016

Kingdom Come - Any Farmer can kill you

by Silver, 05:24

@Gamecritics they look at Kingdom Come: Deliverance and talk about what the game is adding that is mechanically different to most RPGs while admiring the games attention to detail.

As an open-world, first-person RPG, the player will travel over parts of what was then called Bohemia. It looks like the sort of medieval land that a player would want to wander through and explore, but what blew me away was that all the locations were real - the towns, the castles... All of it. Apparently the dev team has hired a full-time historian to research facts, and they've gone to painstaking detail in order to recreate what the area looked like, and what sort of technology would have been around, and even what sort of foliage would have been present.

For example, there's a monastery that plays a prominent role in one of the main missions. On one side of it is a long chute which the monks used as a toilet. Apparently they would to go the top floor, hang their bums off the side, and relieve themselves down the chute with the results landing in a heap at the bottom. On another side of the building was a crane used in medieval construction, powered by a man in a hamster wheel. I raised an eyebrow at this, but yes, again, it was all historically correct. When shown a picture of the same monastery in real life, the faithfulness of the in-game model was amazing.

This same attention to detail extends into the quest design and combat.

At one point, the main character needs to get into this monastery and the team had to consult with the historian to see what would've been possible at that time - Tobias was very specific in saying that the team did not want the player to ‘Press A To Become A Monk', so they had to come up with quest logic that would've made sense in that context.

The combat shows equal care. It was mentioned that in battle, any farmer can kill you. It sounds a little goofy, but since this is a realistic title, the main character will never level up their health or gain toughness or abilities that would be beyond what a normal human being would have. Therefore, staying alive depends on skill with a blade and wearing appropriate armor. No matter how many quests the player might've completed, one well-placed axe strike to their head will still take them down.

Kingdom Come - Collaboration with Deep Silver

we at Warhorse Studios are happy to announce a collaboration with Deep Silver, the publishing label of Koch Media, to publish Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Co-publishing combines the core strength of both companies. While Koch Media will use its worldwide distribution channels and partnerships to achieve best retail results, we stand behind the vision of Kingdom Come: Deliverance and retain freedom in the development of our game. We will keep our communication as open and honest as we did from day one of our Kickstarter campaign.

In 2011 we set out on our quest to create a medieval RPG with no magic or dragons. Two years later it seemed like we hit a wall. The studio was on the edge of closure before we even started, but there was hope. On January 22nd 2014 we started our Kickstarter Campaign and exactly 35,384 backers made our dream come true. On February 20th 2014 you “kick-started” the project and the realdevelopment of Kingdom Come: Deliverance started. Today over 30,000 new backers have joined and, together with your feedback, we are creating an outstanding game.

With the exclusive co-publishing deal between us and Koch Media we have reached the next important milestone in releasing Kingdom Come: Deliverance. This is a great opportunity to bring Kingdom Come: Deliverance to more players around the world. With Koch Media as a strong publishing partner, we will now have the chance to reach an even wider audience, while staying in charge of all creative and communication activity. Koch Media will publish the game physically and digitally for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, as well as the physical PC versions under its Deep Silver label. Warhorse Studios will remain solely responsible for worldwide PC digital distribution. Both digital and physical versions will share a common release date to be announced in the near future – the release date however remains in 2017.

You, our Kickstarter Backer and the Kingdom Come: Deliverance Community won’t have to face any changes in the game, your backer rewards or assistance. Everything stays as it was and the promised rewards will be delivered in 2017, shortly after the game is released.

Our communication channels will continue to work in the way you are used to and we will be answering all your messages and mails.We are convinced that sharing our passion and combining Warhorse Studios with Deep Silver’s professionalism will help us make the game even better.

Thursday - July 14, 2016

Kingdom Come - Armor & RPG Elements

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Armor & RPG

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We are presenting new insides of the development of Kingdom Come: Deliverance! Find out how our extensive RPG system and our sophisticated armor layer system works. Furthermore we are talking about item quality and survival elements in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Take a look!

Friday - July 08, 2016

Kingdom Come - Preview Roundup

Nonetheless, PSU managed to get some hands-on time with the game, which takes the form of medieval action-RPG set in Bohemia (now known as Czech Republic) in the year 1403. Think Elder Scrolls' first-person combat married with a grounded realism pays as much attention to historical accuracy as it does gameplay, and you have a good idea of what to expect.

The demo presented at E3 had me hooked within minutes just because of a simple mini-game. An important part of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is combat — how do players expect to fight if their swords are rusty and dull? Rather than going to the inventory and selecting a repair kit or a whetstone, players will be able to go to a grindstone and sharpen their sword through a small mini-game to keep it at its best stats.

It's actually easier to intimidate people if you take advantage of KC's unique armor and equipment system. Armor adds to a reputation system that keeps the world feeling alive and reactionary rather than set in stone and stale. Lowly peasants may freak if they see you walking around like The Mountain on Game of Thrones, and they'll really super freak if you're just carrying around a scimitar willy-nilly. Our demo driver was quick to point out how armor layers on your avatar to provide protection against the various pointy things trying to kill you in Bohemia. You can have up to four layers of armor that all link together in a way that makes physical sense. You won't be putting layer after layer of metal plates on, for example. You'll have to lay down some leather armor and then put on the heavy stuff, adding to the realism of the world. Be careful, however, as heavy armor will make you noisier and thus easier to detect.

One of the most beautiful aspects of the design of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is the works of art that are featured in the game. However these are not just things that they Google searched and pasted into the world; in fact, they hired an actual painter to digitally draw works of art that would've existed in 1403. Another is the game's soundtrack, which Spoka is assisting on. Currently there are placeholders in for the demo, but in the next couple months the score will be recorded in one of Prague's most famous venues. (My guess is it'll either be at the Rudolfinum or the Klementium.)

The importance of wearing proper armor against what your enemies are using for weapons, as well as your choice in weaponry based on what your enemy is wearing, can’t be understated. There are RPG things like leveling to get up proficiency and weapons and other things, but every character in the game has the exact same amount of health. So, you can’t just cruise your way through something because you have outleveled the area. The strategy of using the correct weapon at the correct time, while constantly adjusting your armor, will be the most important thing in every encounter you have. It even comes into play with your horse, as you’ll apply that layering to their armor as well.

Tuesday - May 24, 2016

Kingdom Come - Delayed Until 2017

by Aubrielle, 05:36

Everyone's most anticipated realistic medieval RPG, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, has been delayed until 2017, according to a Warhorse Studios source.

We’ve recently talked with a Warhorse spokesperson and got confirmation that Kingdom Come: Deliverance won’t be launched this year. An official announcement regarding the definitive release date can be expected between E3 and Gamescom, given that a Community Manager said on April 17 that it won’t be much longer until there’s an official release date.

Tuesday - May 03, 2016

Kingdom Come - Sword Forging

by Myrthos, 12:23

One of the Kickstarter rewards for Kingdom Come: Deliverance was an actual sword. In below video we are shown how these swords are forged.

Remember the day when our Kickstarter campaign started? We were full of doubts: How would the campaign end? What would gamers say about the idea to develop realistic medieval RPG? Did we offer interesting rewards? We were excited and scared both in the same time.

Today we already know that you are the best backers in the world! Thanks to you we are able to work on a game we have dreamed of for years. To show you how grateful we are, we were sharing news from the game development, we released early Technical Alpha versions and few months ago we invited you to find Reeky in the Beta access. Now it is time to start the work on delivering the physical rewards :-)

We are proud to announce that the production of the swords for Kickstarter backers started! The hand-made swords are being produced by our friends from Wulflund Pagan Shop and Arma Epona smithy located in the beautiful landscape of Central Bohemia. Let’s visit the forge to see for yourself!

Thursday - March 24, 2016

Kingdom Come - You Should be Excited

If you've ever wanted to know what it's really like to live in Medieval Europe, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is your game. Warhorse eschews high fantasy elements like magic and dragons in favor of a more grounded experience that follows the real life kidnapping of Wenceslas IV by his brother Sigismund. “We want to make the game as authentic as possible,” Warhorse’s PR manager Toby Stolz told me during his visit to the IGN office.

To re-create war-torn Bohemia in the 15th century, the team has hired a full-time historian, an art expert, and teachers of Historical European Martial Arts to help them recreate medieval life and combat as accurately as possible. “I wouldn’t say [Deliverance] is educational," Stolz added. "But for sure we try to show how people lived back then, their lifestyle, what it was like to live in a time of civil war... stuff like that.”

Saturday - March 12, 2016

Kingdom Come - Historically accurate

When you hear the words "Medieval" and "RPG" in the same sentence you probably think of hacking away at mystical dragons and monsters with your sword or axe. In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, there are no fire-breathing lizards, or evil dark knights. The game pushes aside the fantasy for a story based in the true history of Bohemia, giving you a vibrant and authentic world to explore from a first-person perspective and mold by your choices. But what makes Kingdom Come stand out is its focus on delivering a genuine Medieval world experience without the hud indicators, map waypoints, and handholding of the typical RPG.

Developer Warhorse Games really wants players to immerse themselves in the world, but the main character definitely isn't the center of the events happening around him. If you dilly dally, taking your time to complete a mission or get distracted for too long crafting potions, your mission will play out on its own. If you were meant to rescue a fugitive from a group of bandits, you may find that fugitive murdered in a dank cave if you take too long. Or if you decide not to take part in a battle, the event will play out without your influence - leaving you to deal with the results. This creates a fascinating branching narrative that is difficult to predict and feels completely organic.

Friday - March 04, 2016

Kingdom Come - Goes Into Beta

by Myrthos, 10:20

Kingdom Come: Deliverance has left alpha and entered beta yesterday.

Beta Access to Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Warhorse studios are pleased to announce the release of Kingdom Come Deliverance Beta access on the 3rd of March on Windows PC. This release includes a part of the game's main storyline, multiple quests, new combat systems, weaponry and the first large-scale battle.

Introduction to an epic storyThe game is set in 15th century Central Europe, the Kingdom of Bohemia is on the verge of civil war. You play as Henry, the son of blacksmith. Your hometown was raided and your family was murdered. Driven by a lust for vengeance you go out on an epic journey. The local lord entrusts you with identifying the culprits behind the massacres plaguing the region. You will need to use all your skills of persuasion and intimidation to extract valuable information from bandits but you are not the only one who is after the raiders. A mysterious killer is slaughtering all witnesses in the most vicious way. In order to bring end to the bloodshed you must act fast.

First taste of battleThe Beta version includes the game's first taste of battle. The outcome of the battle depends entirely on your choice of actions. You will have the opportunity to plan the strategy of the attack. You will be able to disguise yourself as one of the enemy in order to infiltrate their camp and discover their weaknesses but using alchemy and preparing poisons are also valid option. Also sneaking around and performing a few stealth takedowns on the sentries might be very helpful when staging a surprise attack.

New available weaponry and combosYou will experience sword fighting in a brand new way which matches the reality of medieval combat. The Beta includes new combat techniques, stances, moves and combos that can be mastered fighting with enemies in skirmishes, large battles or honed in the combat arena. Learn how to slash or stab your opponent, block his attack, master parrying, perform ripostes and counter ripostes. Try new weaponry such as short swords, maces, axes, and shields.

ExplorationVisit new settlements and vast forests with a dynamic weather system. Dive into the exploration of a huge area set in medieval south Bohemia. You can enter villages and interact with the inhabitants. Experience the historically accurate reconstructed landscapes and landmarks of this region. Visit the original forms of medieval castles still standing today.

Beta AccessKingdom Come: Deliverance Beta Access is available for everyone supporting the game through our official website: www.KingdomComeRPG.com

Friday - February 26, 2016

Kingdom Come - Interview @ Faxtralife

FL: So you mentioned both the setting and realism as being a risk. What is it about that time period and realism that was such a strong motivating factor in creating this game despite the risks?

WS: Basically it is Daniel Varvra's dream. He is a Czech patriot he wants to tell the story of the Czech republic, he wants to show that Bohemia was the most important country in the Holy Roman Empire and he wants to talk about a story that really happened that is full of bloody war and intrigue and no one ever covered this period before in an RPG, nor the realism part. You have all these samey slightly realistic games where you have a real life setting like Assassin's Creed but there's always this slight addition of fantasy elements where the Assassin can jump from the tower and survive. Varvra wanted to tell a story that is really kickass and interesting. We all believe if Mel Gibson wouldn't have shot the film Braveheart, no one would know Scottish history and we think this story is even more interesting than that. So why not try the Braveheart effect and see what happens. This time period was also full of political struggle. A love/hate relationship between what became Germans and Czechs, and there were already cultural classes. It was very interesting to research and to tell the story. Nearly every event, NPC, building, and natural landscape feature existed back then.

FL: Are there plans for a sequel?

Of course! Even before we release Kingdom Come: Deliverance the team will already be working on the second part of the game which will most likely be called Kingdom Come: Something but it also depends on the success of the first part. The initial idea was to have a huge game, but we decided to split it into parts because it was too huge for Kickstarter, it would be too expensive. So we decided to do 3 acts. The first part is already way bigger than expected so all 3 together will tell the story. This is still on the horizon because we are still working on Deliverance and then will focus on the next thing.

Thursday - February 18, 2016

Kingdom Come - Alpha Impressions

by Hiddenx, 22:14

PracticallyGeek has previewed the alpha version of Kingdom Come: Deliverance:

KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE ALPHA IMPRESSIONS

I stand at the crest of a small hill, tree's and bushes sway as I make my way over and along the dirt path in front of me. To my left I spot a small home with straw roofing and as I swing back to my right a large stone church structure appears from the top of the tree line. Warhorse I have certain spent some time in creating every little detail in this world, even down to the small rocks and vegetation that cover the ground, it's honestly amazing. To be begin this is a alpha version of the game I'm playing so I do experience the odd frame drop and glitch but I quickly forget these as I'm drawn into more pressing matters like the large plume of black smoke coming from the horizon. In the small village of Samopesh a NPC asks me to investigate the smoke I earlier saw and so begins a journey out of the village and down more dirt paths, I marvel at a winding river that runs past the village and out too a large wooded area. For a alpha build of a game it really does shine in the graphic department, I often find myself wondering off to look at a piece of grain in the wood houses or the light shining through the tree's.

[...]

It goes without saying if you like a RPG games then Kingdom Come should be on your list, the alpha proves that and I fully recommend heading to their website for a closer look.

Monday - February 15, 2016

Kingdom Come - Interview with Devs

Kingdom Come: Deliverance Interview

Warhorse Studios is trying to do something unique; they're trying to make a medieval RPG steeped in historical accuracy and tone. No magic, no dragons, no gathering pieces of some magical relic, just you in the middle of 15th century Bohemia trying your best to survive and make a difference. It all sounds incredibly ambitious, but how exactly are the developers going about making Kingdom Come: Deliverance? Random Encounter's Robert Steinman recently got a chance to speak to some of the fine people working on the game, so saddle up to the fire, brew some ale (or meed, if you're so inclined) and get ready to learn more!

Friday - February 12, 2016

Kingdom Come - Adaptive Music

by Myrthos, 13:11

In a Game Developer Session at GDS2015, Warhorse Studios' Adam Sporka talks about the music in Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

The music in our game responds to the actions of the player. It goes from peaceful to agitated when the player is attacked by enemy NPC, from neutral to dark when entering a cave, etc. The challenge is to respond swiftly, make the transitions between parts of the soundtrack as seamless as possible (maintain the correct voicing and harmonic progressions), and above all, have diverse yet consistent soundtrack.

ADAM SPORKAAdam Sporka is an adaptive music designer and engineer at Warhorse Studios, working on Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and a human–computer interaction researcher at the Department of Computer Graphics and Interaction, Czech Technical University in Prague, focusing on interactive audio.

Tuesday - February 09, 2016

Kingdom Come - Preview @ Segment Next

by Myrthos, 12:07

Segment Next chimes in with a preview of the alpha version of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, like with the below comments about combat (note that the article contains spoilers):

Kingdom Come: Deliverance was yet again staying true to its historical accuracy, and the nomadic Cumans of the latter stages of the medieval era seem to be centric to this catastrophe, and likely an integral part of the main plot of the game.

Inside lay dead bodies and a heavily wounded soldier, whose companion requested aid for his dying friend so that his final hours may be less painful.

In the hope of helping this man, I set to head back to Samopesh, but my attention was diverted by a military camp that trained medieval sword fencing. At the expense of a few coins, I was given a thorough lesson by a trainer on how to duel with a sword.

This was the core melee combat of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It certainly swayed away from conventional mindless hack-and-slash fun we’re accustomed to seeing, and introduced a more tactical form of battle that was fairly sophisticated to learn and even more difficult to master.

The intensity of the combat came not from the blows (I was using a wooden training sword after all), but from the complexity of the task itself.

With intricacies such as timing your blocks and perfectly attacking unguarded parts of your foe either through wide slashes or powerful jabs, the sword fighting was admittedly overwhelming.

In my second playthrough I dedicated myself to become villainous, using every NPC as a practice dummy. I was a little underwhelmed how the normal guards failed to test my novice skills the way the trainer did, dying from a few amateurish jabs I executed without much thought.

I never truly met anyone equipped with a knight’s armor who would push me to the limits, but almost all the combat scenarios felt uncomfortably different from the exhaustive training where I learned the basics of fencing.

The melee combat certainly had overall potential, but the consistency of its application is questionable.

Thursday - February 04, 2016

Kingdom Come - Interview

by Aubrielle, 01:05

Warhorse Studios' PR campaign continues. We've been tipped off to their newest interview for Kingdom Come: Deliverance, this time with PC Invasion.

Martin Ziegler: We’re trying to find a balance between an open-world game and a story-driven game. In the open-world part we want players to be able to immerse themselves in the world in ways which aren’t well explored in games; both in terms of the geographical region and it terms of the historical period. We want players to be able to experience that time and place; we want the world to look like it did at the time and we want people to behave like they did at the time.

So we researched how the justice system worked at the time and what people did at the time – Where did they get their food? When did they get up? How did the public administration system work? Things like that. We want to simulate that in terms of AI and in terms of gameplay mechanics. If you commit a crime, we want the NPCs in the game to react closely to how they would at the time. So we want them to run to the nearest town with a guard that is able to force you to pay the fine or imprison you and stuff like that.

Also we want to have the story that will drive you to explore that world, see different locations and see all the stuff we’ve put in place.

TS-Z: A lot of games are set in medieval times, but no game has ever tried to be realistic and as historically accurate as possible. There’s always this touch of fantasy somewhere; we’ve tried to avoid that completely.

Since we try to have realistic and historically accurate game, universities, museums, cultural people and living history people and people who are not connected to video games are very interested in this project to reconstruct Bohemia in the year 1403.

Saturday - January 16, 2016

Kingdom Come - Interview; History, Combat

OnlySP has an exclusive interview with Warhorse Studios, including a detailed, fascinating look at the historical period in which the game takes place, as well as details about combat.

Thanks, Couch.

Despite its richness in political and religious conflict, the Bohemian revolution, as well as the larger medieval period, seem difficult to pull off in games. Few make use of the setting without adding elements of magic or mythology, but Warhorse felt they were up to the challenge.

“There are several reasons [why we chose the setting],” Stolz-Zwilling says. “Daniel Vávra [Mafia II], our creative director, who’s also the co-founder of the studio, is Czech. It’s close to him because the story’s located in today’s Czech Republic – Bohemia is a part of it – so that’s the easiest explanation. The other one is that we wanted to tell a story that’s historically accurate and based on realism.

“They thought, ‘what’s actually happened in Europe, what stories are there?’ There’s the Second World War, the French Revolution; a lot of stories to tell, but most of them aren’t in Czech Republic or are already covered. There’re tons of World War II games, lots about the era of the French Revolution.”

“But no one’s really tried to tell a story about the Holy Roman Empire,” he continues, “even though we believe that it’s a huge period of European history that’s extremely interesting because there were several lords fighting each other, claiming to be united but, in fact, they were more fighting each other.

“We think, we hope, we believe, that the story we want to tell, of the Hussite Wars and the Holy Roman Empire is extremely interesting, full of intrigue, war and blood, but also has its sunny sides. We just believe that this story is kick-ass, and we want to tell it to the world.”

Medieval Realism

One genre where the Middle Ages have found success in gaming is RTS. However, games like Crusader Kings and Total War lack the explicit characterization that Warhorse are aiming for with Kingdom Come.

“The medieval times are well covered by books and movies…kind-of,” says Stolz-Zwilling. “It’s pretty popular right now, even though they’re quite Hollywood-ish, where they try to make it more interesting with fantasy elements. So, it’s not unrepresented in general, but in games, for sure. There are games that somehow cover it, but no RPGs. Like Paradox Games’ Europa Universalis, they’re of course showing the Holy Roman Empire, but there’s no deep story; it’s just a setting.

“If you think about RPGs, in most of them you have a sword and shield as your main weapon. The sword and shield are connected to medieval times, and medieval times are connected to realism – because they actually happened.

“No one’s gone this way to the realism part; they stop with the medieval setting. We’re going that step further by trying to make it as realistic as possible.”

Saturday - January 09, 2016

Kingdom Come - Walk The Walk

by Aubrielle, 04:37

In this video update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Karak goes into the technical details behind the game's graphics.

Thanks to Couch for tonight's news.

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Exploring a bit of the world on the PC in the game Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Though the game is coming for both next gen systems currently the Alpha, which is mostly a landscape tech demo, is just out on PC. So lets walk the walk and talk about some of the technical aspects of the game. Karak most concentrates on graphics at this point.

Thursday - January 07, 2016

Kingdom Come - Beta, Crime System and More

The Kickstarter update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance tells us that they are entering the final stage of beta development, containing:

First introduction to an epic story

All core game mechanics

Enlarging the current game map (triple)

The first important key battle/siege

A new weapon Type: Sword and Shield

And many more…

With this being the current status of development:

Finishing the Story: Daniel Vávra and his team of 7 writers are finishing over 2.500 pages of screenplay, hundred pages of design and have now more than 70 quests with over 300.000 words of dialogues.

Dog Companion: We are working on the next Kickstarter Stretch Goal - a man's best friend. We decided to revive the extinct breed “Alount”. It was a very common breed used for hunting, herding and guarding.

2D and 3D improvements: With hundreds of incredible artworks and many ingame improvements like the Dynamic weather changes and the Total Illumination System Kingdom Come: Deliverance gets even more realistic (watch this video from Vlad4D). In addition to that we improved our 3D face scanning technologies. We're scanning every single head for our game including over 30 different expressions and emotion to create life-like facial animations, even with wrinkles :)

Cutscene production starts: We are adding the first cutscenes into the game, with full motion capture of real actors and completely new voices. We prepared more than 25 hours of voiceovers and around 4h of symphonic music which will be recorded in Rudolfinum, one of the most important concert halls in Europe.

Tuesday - November 24, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Alpha 0.5 Release

by Myrthos, 12:32

Warhorse Studios inform us of the availability of the 0.5 Alpha of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which contains the following new features:

New features include:

Crime system: Stealing or attacking people will have consequences, the population will behave accordingly. If you are seen committing a crime, multiple options are available, from negotiating your way out, going to jail or even resisting the arrest by fighting against the authorities.

Multiple enemies: Fighting will get even more dangerous and challenging, thanks to new AI improvements. Every opponent has now different skills and equipment. Combat feels even more realistic and deadlier.

Adaptive soundtrack: Addition of new proprietary sound technology adapting the soundtrack's mood based on player's actions. For instance, the game's symphonic music goes from peaceful to agitated when the player is under attack and is modifying itself depending on player's performance. The system handles all kind of situations based on actions and environments, such as exploration, theft, danger, etc.

RPG and survival elements: Characters, now needs to eat and sleep in order to stay healthy and survive. New horse inventory will help carry more supplies.

This is also the latest alpha release before the beta phase.If you like to see Daniel Vávra talk, you can see him in an upcoming Twitch session and ask him questions:

On Tuesday December the 1st, 7PM CET, we will host a live stream of the latest update of Kingdom Come: Deliverance on our Twitch Channel: www.twitch.tv/warhorsestudios. Everyone interested in Q&A with Daniel Vávra, please visit our forum to send your questions.

Wednesday - November 18, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Interview @ Player2

Interview – Kingdom Come Deliverance

I recently had the great pleasure to chat to Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, the PR Manager at Warhorse Studios, developers of the highly anticipated Kingdom Come: Deliverance. In our interview we addressed comparisons to Skyrim, its successful Kickstarter campaign, and what it’s like to develop a game from Prague. Check out the interview below.

So Tobias thank you for giving me your time today, firstly what is Kingdom Come: Deliverance? How did the game come about?

Tobias Stolz-Zwilling: Dobrý den Paul. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is the first chapter of an epic journey through medieval Bohemia. Specifically; it’s a single player RPG with a great focus on immersive realism and historical accuracy. Our story takes place in Bohemia 1403 as a true to life retelling of clashes between kings, intrigues and bloody civil war.

Are there any games in particular that serve as motivation for the game, whether that is mechanically, aesthetically or even in terms of narrative?

It’s not only games that inspire us but books and movies as well. We aim on making a historically accurate experience which is the reason why we have a fulltime historian on our team. She has to triple check all design elements, sources, inspiration, proper behavior. Everything is under scrutiny, even small details like vegetation and anything that comes to mind when you look at the year 1403 in central Europe.

Are there any particular themes that are directing the overall plot?

I would say that it’s warfare, corruption and discord. The current king of bohemia is weak and has been kidnapped by his half-brother who is now invading bohemia. You, Henry the son of a blacksmith are one of many victims of his raiding army. Your village is burned, your family and friends are slaughtered and you will be torn into an ugly and bloody civil war. We basically try to frame the causes as to why the Hussite Wars break out a few years later. You won’t change history but you get the chance to tell your story within this true to history story. And you decide what Henry’s contribution will be. [...]

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Alpha 0.5 Impressions

Kingdom Come :Deliverance returns with it’s latest batch of updates. Though not as exciting as 0.4’s combat update, update 0.5 layers in more details into the overall game experience. The added items help build the immersion of the environment and start bringing the world to life.

Most of the additions this time around add to the environment and look of Kingdom Come. New updates to CryEngine allowed Warhorse Studios to add even more dynamic lighting and shadows throughout. As the sun moves through the sky, shadows shift and waver. Jumping will let you see the silhouette of your character mimicked on the ground as he bounds into the air.

Friday - November 06, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Dressed in all the Wrong Colors

by Myrthos, 13:14

Kingdom Come: Deliverance touts itself as being historically accurate. In a video by Grundkurs Gaming of a while ago (but still accurate today) it is shown that the clothing that is used in the game is not completely accurate for that era.

In this Video I talk about how the villagers in the third Alpha are dressed, which changes in fashion took place at the start of the 15th century in Bohemia and why they happened.

Monday - October 19, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Sword fight

by Myrthos, 19:55

In a video Pixelated Apollo shows the sword fighting in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. In it you can see the 5 pointed star, with which you can hit your opponent from 6 drections (including the center) or block in 6 directions. Just in case you haven't seen this before or are unable to play the current alpha build. It also offers some special attacks by doing predefined sequences.

V. Bocan: If you fight a lot, you will become a better fighter. So you do not have the skills to select where you want to progress, but only to use them. And in these skills, you have "perks" special abilities in some ways. There you have to choose the ones you want. For example, if you fight with swords, you'll have to make a choice among the different techniques available.

D. Vavra: This is similar to the old Fallout. Each time you gain a level or two, you'll have to choose one of these skills. It could be a new movement or a new capacity for speech. Next, you'll statistics (strength, vitality, endurance, etc ...) that can be improved, but the skills are the most important [Ed. In alpha, the statistical increase of themselves when we use Affiliated skills, like the Elder Scrolls series] [...]

Have you paid attention to the historical reality?

D. Vavra: Some people think historically accurate games can be annoying. This is not what we think, and we wanted to offer an experience similar to a machine back in time, where players can see how was the fifteenth century. There are many interesting things that we can show, then we are as accurate as possible. I do not think it's inconsistent with anything, it's just a little more work for us. So, we will have the most realistic fighting. We look at martial arts and medieval combat to provide an authentic representation. We also try to dispel myths that run over this period: in many movies, you see people get cut in armor as if they were made of paper and it will not happen in our game.

V. Bocan: Similarly, there is a myth that if you wear a plate armor, you can not move and you'll need the help of four people to ride your horse. This is wrong and we want to try to show it.

D. Vavra: We try to change these myths. On the other hand, we use real places that still exist and that you can visit. Old castles, churches and other stuff that always stand up. [...]

What about the social situation of the character?She will be led to evolve as and events of the game?

V. Bocan: That's an interesting question. You start as a simple son of a blacksmith. You will not become king, as many people require. You will not go to conquer the world and you do not become a pirate, because there is no sea ... What else?

D. Vavra: Basically, there is an interesting development. But you are a normal guy who is involved in events that surpass him, that he can not influence. There is indeed a social progression, but you will not become a knight and nobleman or something else. It's more personal character development, and evolution of its importance and influence on events.

V. Bocan: It's just an ordinary man who sees his life turned upside down and finds himself propelled into something much larger, it must still try to solve to survive. [...]

Have you planned a faction system?Some will they be reachable?Does it have a reputation system?

V. Bocan: We have a reputation system and there are factions everywhere. There are bandits, Cumans hordes, which is allied with factions market for example. You can not join the Cumans, but you have a reputation vis-à-vis them. So if you kill a lot of bandits, just because you want to beat you, your reputation as bandits killer grows. Conversely, if you do bad things, people will look at you askance and refuse to give you quests or shops raise prices. If you steal things and assassinate people, your head will be a price and try to kill you. So reputation is very important. You do not join faction, you just do things that have an impact on your reputation to the extent of what you can achieve. [...]

Friday - September 25, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Interview @ Eurogamer

"We definitely are working on it and it's part of the plan," he says. "Let's say [PC/Mac] should be August or something: consoles are going to be, I don't know, September, for example - not like half-a-year after it. As soon as possible.

"It's on CryEngine so we don't have to port the code. Basically we take the PC version, we run it on the console and it should work, but we maybe optimise the memory," he adds. "A couple of months ago it worked properly, the previous build. It wasn't optimised so the frame-rate was lower but it wasn't a major issue. It's working; it needs some optimisations as always, but I don't think it's that major issue.

Pad controls are already built into the tech alpha that's available to backers. "Currently it plays better with joypad actually," he adds, but with tweaks, the two should be equal.

There's also the potential for virtual reality, as CryEngine supports it and Warhorse, the developer, has an Oculus Rift dev kit. But the tricky issue of motion sickness will need solving first. "We are going to support it," Vavra says. "What I don't know yet is how much work it's going to be or if it's even possible to avoid the motion sickness with the type of game we are making. With, for example, horse riding in first-person, it could cause motion sickness now even without the VR!" Vavra says he suffers motion sickness from VR so it's something he's sensitive to.

THE 15th century saw many historic events take place, such as the arrival of Christopher Columbus in America and the destruction of the Christian kingdoms of Nubia - but one game developer is using this specific century to tell a different tale in Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Warhorse Studios, based in Prague, have created a first-person, role-playing game set in the medieval Kingdom of Bohemia, where players will explore a vast open-world setting and complete quests - restoring order across the land and defeating the king's evil brother.

"A pretty epic one I would say," says Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, PR Manager of Warhorse Studios, "With Kingdom Come: Deliverance the player will get hit by the medieval age at full tilt. It's a realistic and historical game that allows you to tell your story within a real historical story that happened in the heart of Europe.

"The game will take place in Bohemia 1403, a region rich in culture and silver which is currently torn apart by warfare, corruption and discord. You won't change history but you will shape the character and the behaviour of Henry, a young blacksmith you'll incarnate and play your role in this bloody conflict.

"Your home town gets destroyed by the invading force and by (un-)lucky accident you'll get torn into the civil war. You will have many choices to make and things to do, but beware, every action calls a proper reaction so think twice if pulling your sword is always the right decision."

Similar to the likes of Skyrim, the player will take control of a player from a first-person perspective, and Warhorse Studios insist that this is the right choice for their game and for the enjoyment of the player.

"Immersion is extremely important for us," said Tobias, "We want the player to actually believe that he is really standing in a Bohemian forest or that he tastes blood in his mouth every time he gets hit in the face. That's why we have chosen to be first-person and single player only. With our high graphic level we actually try to photo realistically recreate Bohemia from the year 1403." [...]

Wednesday - September 02, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Interview @ Gameskinny

How important will role-playing be in Kingdom Come? We are aware that it takes place during real events, but how big of an impact will your decisions have?

Since this game is an open world RPG, the RPG-System plays a huge role of course. So the more you use a weapon, for example, the better you’ll get with it. But still the is the realism part in our game, so it’s not just about levels, but we also demand a high skill level forces the player to analyze every battle he is going into. Simple button mashing will most likely get you killed. So it’s about tactics, reactions, stamina management and many more. A very common feedback we get from players is: “I never hold a sword in my hand, but I believe it feels like this”!

In general we want every action of the player to have a proper reaction. These reactions can either have a local or even global impacts. But it’s very important to understand that you’ll not be able to change history, but you will tell your personal story inside the historical, real story. So it’s up to you how you behave, how you shape your character. Are you the negotiating type, or do you solve problems with your swords? There are many more choices you’ll need to deal with.

Thursday - August 27, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Alpha 0.4 Combat Update

The combat in the alpha 0.4 version of Kingdom Come: Deliverance has seen a few tweaks.

We had a great time at Gamescom presenting the sword combat in Tech Alpha 0.4 both to public and journalists! You, our dear backers, already tried it and we are very grateful for your feedback.

Thanks to this feedback we were able to make small tweaks in the sword combat, which was included in small update together with the German and French subtitles. If you haven't played Tech Alpha 0.4 for a while, you should try again :-)

To explain why the sword combat in Kingdom Come: Deliverance is so cool, we prepared a video update with our lead combat designer Viktor Bocan:

Monday - August 24, 2015

RPGWatch Feature - Kingdom Come: Deliverance Gamescom Preview

by Myrthos, 21:25

Here is the final article of the Gamescom series of 12 articles. It covers Kingdom Come: Deliverance. A game that was mentioned to be historically correct a few times in the presentation, but is it a RPG already?

Every NPC in the game will have its own routine. They get up in their own house and have breakfast there, go to work and pick the tools he or she needs. The NPC won't be carrying these tools with him or her all the time as is the case in some other games. When the working day has finished the NPC will go home again or go and do something else, like hang around in the bar. A NPC has several options of what they can do in their spare time. The choice they make is based on experience. If the blacksmith is in the pub and something nasty happens there, he will remember that and the next time, he will go and do something else. This would also mean that the NPC in the games of two different players could end up doing completely different things in their spare time.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Interview @ Gameplane.de

Wednesday - July 29, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Verion 0.1 First Look

by Myrthos, 12:41

On his Youtube channel Omega Project Zero has a video of a play through session of version 1.0 of Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

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The most unbelievable game of our time has now released Alpha Access. The current build is 0.1 so you can't do a whole lot, but I managed to steal some guys flute for a quest and talk to a bunch of NPCs in the town.

This is the most gorgeous game I have ever seen by far and there is so much more to come! Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an Open World Sandbox RPG where you will be able to go anywhere and do anything on a massive map that will involve non-linear quests that you can complete many different ways as you see fit and experience a living world where every NPCs life matters. Stay tuned for more, as they update I will be continuing videos on this amazing game!

Sunday - June 28, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - is Skyrim without Magic @ HardcoreGamer

Ever wanted play a realistic, medieval, open-world RPG that has no magic in it? Warhorse Studios has the game for you. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is that open-world that dares to exclude magic. I got a sneak peek at the upcoming game at E3 2015, and I think any fan of The Elder Scrolls or The Witcher franchises has something to be excited about. (...)

In Kingdom Come: Deliverance, you play as a young blacksmith who has lost everything to war. Fate drags him into a conspiracy involving a kidnapped king, which would inevitably lead to another war. That’s the gist of the main campaign, but players don’t have to rush through it. Much like The Witcher and The Elder Scrolls, players can feel free to wander the world and pick up sidequests. During the demo, the developer opted to wander off from the campaign objective and accept a new quest to investigate a recent murder.

This isn’t going to be a short game by any stretch of the imagination. At launch there will be sixteen square km of land to explore and about thirty hours of gameplay. There will be sprawling cities, castles, forests, and numerous villages to explore, though I was only shown a forest and village in the demo. Warhorse is bringing the world of Deliverance to life by giving every NPC their own role in a community. You’ll see people wondering the streets and doing their jobs during the day, and then see them retreat to their homes at night. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s nice to see such attention to detail.

Deliverance’s combat is very unique in the fact that it strives for authenticity. With melee weapons, players will be able to aim at five different spots on the human body; head, right-side, left-side, lower-right and lower-left. To counter, you’ll need to watch the enemy’s animations and angle your sword in the correct direction. Warhorse is working with martial arts experts to nail 15th century fighting, and it looks to be paying off. The swordplay I witnessed looked slow and methodical, but severely intense. One wrong hit and you could die instantly. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is not for those who love to rush in and annihilate enemies with a few well-placed combos. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is, however, for those looking for realistic and strategic swordplay. (...)

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Teaser & Party

E3 is around the corner and we finally set everything up for our Warhorse Community Party! With great help of Richard Lagnese from Gen Studios we could arrange everything! When: Thursday the 18th June 2015 Where: Casey’s Irish Pub (613 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90017) What: Live let’s play and trailer screening of the newest Kingdom Come Alpha, including the brand-new and unique Combat-system! Q&A with Dan, Tobi and other members of the team. (It’s planned at least) Why: Because we ROCK!!! And you know it! :) Get the E3 experience without E3 prices! So don’t hesitate and meet the creators of Kingdom Come: Deliverance and drink a Beer with them. Get Warhorse insider stories first hand (for a beer or two!) and ask Dan what you always wanted to know, like which beard shampoo he uses. The place is limited to 100 People so make sure to come early. Bring it oooooooooooooon! :)

Monday - June 01, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - E3 Plans

by Myrthos, 12:22

In a video update, Warhorse Studios informs us of their plans at E3 and introduce us to the landscapes in Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Holá holá holá! And there is a new Video Update….. wuhuuuu! Today we introduce what we plan for the upcoming E3 in Los Angeles! Combat will be a big deal same as new Quests, features and your very own horse! Make sure to visit us at E3!!! :) Please contact us via mail at info@warhorsestudios.cz In the Video Update #11 you will also meet Kuba Holik, our lead 3D Art who will introduce to you how he creates the beautiful landscape of Kingdom Come: Deliverance! As detailed as it can get! :)

Localization: in addition to English voice-overs you can now choose German or French subtitles

If you backed for Baron tier or higher, please register on our website to get the Steam code to download the Tech Alpha. If you need help, please follow the instructions on our website or email us. New update will be available in the second half of June.

You can take a look at the sword combat in this behind the scenes video from Daniel Vávra, but please remember it is still a work in progress from a basic testing build. The combat in game looks already much better :-)

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Also the new location Merhojed village is being presented, the merchandise section on their wesite is ready now and for European backers there is Warhorse beer to be had.

Tuesday - May 19, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Update 0.4 for E3

New video from Stalli One-Eleven that summarizes new features for the E3 and offers the chance to win a copy of KingdomComeDeliverance!

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A first-person, open world, realistic RPG that will take you to the Medieval Europe in a time of upheaval and strife

A humble, young blacksmith loses everything to war. As he tries to fulfill the dying wish of his father, Fate drags him into the thick of a conspiracy to save a kidnapped king and stop a bloody conflict. You will wander the world, fighting as a knight, lurking in the shadows as a rogue, or using the bard’s charm to persuade people to your cause. You will dive deep into a sweeping, epic, nonlinear story from Daniel Vávra, an award-winning designer from the Mafia series. Our unique, first-person combat system lets you wield sword or bow in both one-on-one skirmishes and large-scale battles. All of this – and more – brought to life beautifully with next-gen visuals delivered via CryEngine 3.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Character Custimization & Clothing System

Wednesday - May 06, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Preview @ the Stoned Gamer

by Myrthos, 12:53

The Stoned Gamer has previewedKingdom Come: Deliverance, which also shows how not to start an article as the author explains the issues he has with his girfriend breaking up while writing this article.

Admittedly, Kingdom Come looks like one of the most gorgeous incarnations of medieval Europe the world has ever seen. From the type of wood to the manner in which swords are constructed, the developers have been insisting they are making an incredibly realistic game, and judging by the newly-released screenshots, Kingdom Come looks pretty damn realistic. According to one developer on the game's Facebook page, you will need:

64bit Windows 7 or higher

DirectX 11 compatible video card

8GB RAM

6GB HDD space

4 core processor or better

The requirements aren't that strenuous, but if your rig doesn't comply, you have until the Summer of 2016 to get your PC in fighting shape to run Kingdom Come.

Monday - April 27, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Preview @ OnlySP

So why the Bohemian (Hussite) wars time period? Mafia and Mafia II designer and Warhorse co-founder Daniel Vávra had been searching through interesting periods of Czech history when he came across the Bohemian (Hussite) Wars. “We all learn about it at school, but you don’t pay too much attention when you are young,” Rydl explained. Rediscovering the political intrigue of the period inspired the team to create a game set around the bloody civil war. Czech films and literature are also attributed as inspirations in developing the game.

Henry’s story reflects the stories of the people during these wars. The destruction of his home and death of his family in 1403 (the beginning of the game in the first act) is the catalyst for Henry’s quest for revenge against those responsible, but it is while he is on this quest that he uncovers a conspiracy to save a kidnapped king. It falls to him to choose whether or not to stop a bloody conflict with his knowledge. Rydl explained that “after playing all three parts you can understand the reasons why people wanted to change the way they lived, the way they pray or you find out who will be the king.” Each part can be played separately and still be enjoyed, and Rydl expects a full playthrough of all three parts to take 60-70 hours to complete.

Sunday - April 26, 2015

Kingdom Come - Interview @ Polygon

Colin Campbell of Polygon interviewed Warhorse studios this week to talk with Daniel Vávra about his latest RPG game Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Why is Medieval Fantasy so Dominant?

Games, movies and TV shows are full of worlds that take a medieval backdrop and overlay fantasy elements, like mystical creatures and magical powers. Vávra believes that realism also has its place.

"Advances in special effects mean that fantastical elements ans superheroes are popular, because they look so great. The same thing in video games, in terms of fantasy. Designers wanted to do dragons from the early days and so they did them. Everyone has gotten used to it and they don’t want to remove those parts."

He said that the game is packed full of quests. "I was a little bit afraid at first. I worried that we would not have enough ideas for side quests. Can we really do 50 quests based in medieval villages without monsters? It turns out, we can. We have more ideas for quests than we can use and I think they are interesting, more so than in other RPGs.

Kingdom Come - Translated Interview Quotes

In an interview with our dear friends over at PCGames, Warhorse Studios’ Daniel Vavra revealed some of the concerns surrounding the development of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. As Daniel said, the team is currently receiving lots of messages from happy fans, asking them to take their time and polish the game before releasing, however the team is afraid that some gamers may misinterpret some of the game’s features that have been already announced.

As Daniel said:

“So far we’ve been receiving positive feedback. Fans often say <<Please take your time and release it later when the game is polished and not in order to hit a deadline>>. The only thing I’m a little worried about is that some players may misinterpret some features and have high expectations for them.”

Daniel then explained this by giving an example. In Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s trailer, Warhorse Studios claimed that the game will feature epic battles. And while the game does pack some epic battles according to Daniel, players may have misinterpreted this and expect dozens of such battles (perhaps even with strategic elements). That’s far from what Warhorse Studios is creating, thus some gamers may get disappointed by the end product.

Daniel added:

“The story that we tell may very well contain only two or three such epic battles. Kingdom Come: Deliverance will not be about the heroic leader – you are just a soldier and like all soldiers, you must survive these battles. The castle battles are meant to be some of the game’s Story highlights, and not a feature that will be repeated each and every half hour.”

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Voiceover Poll

Hello there. So we have released first alpha with voice overs and people started to ask for different accents, different actors, more archaic language etc. So it would be interesting to discuss this a little.

First of all some explanations. All voiceovers were done by just one woman and two men during one session, so its really just temporary, it was cheap and without any rehearsing. Knowing this, I would say that its really good.

In a prototype which you can see in our Kickstarter videos and livestream, we tried to use old Shakespearean English and I personally think, that it was too much. Lot of people complained that its too much, some complained that its not enough. Seems that it would be hard to have agreement on this.

So here is my personal opinion - We write in Czech and we use rather modern language with some archaic words while avoiding some modern words. I would like to achieve something similar in English and any other language. Personally I do have a problem with British accent or old English - mostly because it doesn't male any more sense than any other accent. Old Shakespearean English has nothing to do with our period and Bohemia. There are few movies based on Czech books shot in Czech Republic with English actors and they could hardly sound more weird. British English simply sounds unnatural in Czech environment when you know Czech language. I also hate it, when Germans/Russian speak English with German/Russian accent which should represent them speaking their native language. Its terrible. Its different when they represent someone who is German and speaks different language, then it makes sense of course, but watching movie from Germany in English and everybody has accent is silly.

Friday - April 03, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Video Update #10

by Couchpotato, 06:11

Warhorse Studios posted the tenth video update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance today that talks about the new features they released in Tech Alpha 0.3.

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Today we are introducing new features in Tech Alpha 0.3 including lock picking mini game, temporary voice overs or basic perception. Dan is also talking about plans for E3, Beta version and new release date. In the end we invite you to Bitva Libušín or Battle of the Nations in Prague.

Saturday - March 07, 2015

Kingdom Come - Impression @ Game Splash

by Couchpotato, 05:28

I found a new Impression article this week for Kingdom Come: Deliverance on a site called Game Splash. The site talks about what the latest alpha version offers.

When I discovered this gem, this beautiful looking masterpiece, I felt that old feeling of excitement blanket over me akin to youngsters eagerly anticipating Christmas Day the night before. I felt giddy and joyous to see something so beautiful not only visually but in it's creation through a community that supported it all the way. Of course I'm talking about Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but you for one may not be so familiar with the title, so let me break it down. Come with me on this magical journey adventurer!

Friday - March 06, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Preview @ Kotaku

I'm very much into the premise of Kingdom Come Deliverance, which is a medieval RPG that's all about history. No monsters, no magic, no witches, no giant rats. Just regular folk going about everyday medieval business.

Which, you know, will obviously include famine and war and brigands and disease and all other unsightly things, but for now, in the game's early alpha release build, there's just the sun, the birds and the breeze to worry about.

This time we take a look into the history, as Warhorse Studios founders – Daniel Vavra and Martin Klima – discuss the most important moments before launching the Kickstarter project. In the end we invite you for a small visit to our studio to unveil some plans for months that lay ahead.

We are very thankful for all the support from our backers and of course from you!

Monday - March 02, 2015

Kingdom Come - Interview @ 2xpgaming

Recently, we were given the opportunity to talk with Warhorse Studios, the developer behind the project Kingdom Come: Deliverance. This game is one of the most highly-funded crowdfunded games out there, raising over $2.2 million with over 44,000 backers. Furthermore, the developers are veterans of the game industry and include former 2K, Altar, and Bohemia devs working on the project. The game community is very excited for the upcoming game, as are we. Our Developer Liaison, Bryan, spoke with Jiri Rydl about the project.

Wednesday - February 25, 2015

Kingdom Come - Interview @ OnlySP

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a game firmly rooted in the Middle Ages. “We want to make the game as realistic as possible,” Warhorse Studios’ social media manager Jiri Rydl tells us. “Of course we have to make compromises to keep the game fun. For instance the doors are little bit bigger than in reality, just to be sure player will be able to enter the building. If I visit some historical places and buildings I always hit the door with my head!”

A game about 15th century medieval Europe is an intriguing concept. A time of great conflict for the developers’ home country of the Czech Republic, the 14th and 15th centuries saw the aftermath of Charles IV’s death and the civil war resulting from his two sons Wenceslaus and Sigismund’s claims to the throne. Daniel Vávra, responsible for Mafia and Mafia II and now Warhorse co-founder, had been searching through interesting periods of Czech history when he came across the Bohemian (Hussite) Wars. “We all learn about it at school, but you don’t pay too much attention when you are young.” Rydl explained. Rediscovering the political intrigue of the period inspired the team to create a game set around the bloody civil war.

Within their chosen time period Warhorse are aiming to tell the story of Henry, a poor blacksmith seeking vengeance against those who slaughtered his family. The three acts of the game tell Henry’s story, deeply embedded in the backdrop of actual historical events. Henry’s story reflects the struggles of the people during the Hussite Wars. Rydl explained that “after playing all three parts you can understand the reasons why people wanted to change the way they lived, the way they pray or you find out who will be the king.” Each part can be played separately and still be enjoyed, and Rydl expects a full playthrough of all three parts to take 60-70 hours to complete.

Thursday - February 12, 2015

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Unboxing The Flag

by Couchpotato, 04:23

Warhorse Studios posted a video on Facebook that unboxes the games medieval flag.

Now we have a proper medieval flag for Středověký festival a Bitva Libušín / Medieval festival and Battle Libušín! Unfortunately the lion was not allowed on flags like thisone. We will make some modern version of it next time.

Kingdom Come - Interview @ Red Bull

Hi Dan, tell us what’s been happening since we last spoke: what’s the current status of the game?

A lot has been happening. The team is three times bigger since our Kickstarter ended. We went to full-scale production, we released playable tech alpha for our backers, we raised another half million dollars on our own website and of course the game has made a huge leap forward. We have implemented tons of new game mechanics, our combat system is finally becoming more than a clumsy prototype, something actually playable and enjoyable. Our AI team has built one of the most robust artificial intelligence systems used in a game, we’ve started to work on quests and the world is getting bigger and bigger.

It’s been more than a year since you launched the Kickstarter. What’s changed in your vision during that time, and why? Have you had to remove anything?

We are setting priorities for each mechanism and asset, so in case we will be behind schedule, we will remove tasks that have the lowest priority or we will just simplify them. That means, that we didn’t remove anything, we just gave some things lower priority. We will see!

What’s new in the game that you didn’t plan to include originally?

We have a ton of work to do, so it’s not a good idea to add something on top of it, but we did. Since our graphics department seems to be doing okay, they decided to make the game world a little bit larger. There’s going to be one extra location spanning a few extra square kilometres. It also seems that the gameplay time might be longer than we promised, if we manage to finish all the side quests we plan to have. I mean it could be as much as 10-20 extra gameplay hours.

Jiri Rydl: It was idea of Dan Vavra. He was thinking about a new game from our history, which would be both new and appealing to a lot of players. When you dig deeper and deeper into the history of Bohemia, you find several interesting periods and the civil war among sons of Charles IV. was one of them.

Which elements do you think that will make your game unique?

J.R.: I would point out especially three of them – realism, unique fighting system and AI. We want to make the game as realistic as possible. We have two specialists in our team to consult the historic details of every aspect – architecture, dress codes, habits or even animals. Sometimes we reach out for help to universities or we invite professional swordsmen to our office to show us how to fight. We wanted to open new possibilities for player and offer more than just hack and slash. Every move is important, even move of your feet, which can have effect on your stability. The fights are much more realistic and thus shorter in comparison with other games. On the other hand they are very intensive and you have to think twice before you draw sword. Your opponents can be dumb like some unexperienced thieves, but you can also meet well trained guard or a professional soldier who are well armed, who know how to fight and who will wait for your mistake patiently.

How much time did it take you to prepare the Kickstarter campaign?

J.R.: It depends – the demo used for instance in our Kickstarter stream was prepared for publishers in the first place and it took almost a year to make it (we were much smaller studio in that time). The campaign itself took about three months – we prepared six video updates, we talked to press, we thought about stretch goals… Lot of work!

Kingdom Come - Story Details @ OnlySP

Each act of Czech developer Warhorse Studios’ upcoming Kingdom Come: Deliverance will have a complete storyline as well as an overarching narrative, according to head of communications Jiří Rýdl.

The medieval, open-world RPG is planned to release in three acts, following the journey of a young blacksmith in a land ravaged by war.

Speaking about the interactions between the acts, Rýdl said:

"The acts are a little bit like Harry Potter. There is a story running through each one that resolves itself, but some questions remain unanswered and the story continues. The best way to experience Kingdom Come: Deliverance is to play all three acts from the beginning, but you don’t have to. There will be new locations, new quests and new NPCs in every time, so there is plenty of stuff to do. We’re estimating that it will take players 20-30 hours of gameplay to complete an act."

Kingdom Come promises to be “a true, hardcore RPG”, and has raised over $2.2m from more than 44,000 backers. Moving on to talk about the implications of success for the franchise, Rýdl stated that it’s not all about the money, but giving players what they want, saying:

"The financial aspect is always important, not just because of the income, but because it’s a measurement of interest. If no one is buying or playing Act I, then what would be the reason to work on Act II? But we definitely hope for the best."

Kingdom Come - Preview @ Techtimes

Warhorse is working to develop a single-player role-playing game that's set in a medieval environment minus fantasy elements. While that vision remains unchanged, progress to make it happen hasn't been without its challenges, Stolz-Zwilling acknowledges.

"The right balance between historical accuracy and fun gameplay became everyday business to the point where we added a full-time historian to our team. Not everything is possible in a video game -- and that's a lesson we had to learn very quick," Stolz-Zwilling told Tech Times.

Overall, the growing community response to Kingdom Come's tech alpha has been good, says Stolz-Zwilling. There has been a fair amount of constructive criticism, which he says the studio both needs and appreciates.

"We are very glad to have such a dedicated and enthusiastic community," he says. "Because we are a crowd-funded company on Kickstarter we have a close alliance with our community."

Kingdom Come - New Information @ Only SP

One of Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s most exciting features, aside from being a medieval RPG with no fantasy elements, will be the game’s major battles. We recently had a chance to speak with Jiří Rýdl from Warhose Studios about Kingdom Come and asked how the battles would play out in the game. The answer we got was actually kind of surprising.

According to Rýdl, the game’s major battles will feature literally hundreds of NPCs on the field at one time. However, unlike most games where you can simply run into battle and take out half the army yourself, Kingdom Come seems to be taking a different approach. Rýdl told us, “I have to warn you that the battles are more or less taking place “around” you. You are just one guy, not a leader, you do not move armies, just your legs, and the best thing you can do when the battle begins is to hide somewhere. If you need to fight, choose weaker opponents. If you see someone on the horse, just run.”

In addition to major battles out on the fields of the open world, there will also be major castle sieges in the game. As with the rest of the game, Warhorse Studios is looking to be as authentic as possible by making the sieges extremely difficult. Rýdl told us that players can very easily become just “cannon fodder” themselves in these battles. Sieges will involve the use of, “catapults, boiling oil, moats and archers,” according to Rydl. Your best chance of survival, hints Rýdl, is to find, “the best armour and stick to the heavy armoured troopers”.

Thursday - January 22, 2015

Kingdom Come - Interview @ GamingBolt

GamingBolt has anoither interview with Jiří Rýdl of Warhorse Studios this week, and this time they talk about developing Kingdom Come Deliverance for consoles and PC.

Rashid Sayed: How far away we are before the game launches on the consoles and PC? Are you guys targeting simultaneous launch on consoles and PC?

Jiří Rýdl: During our Kickstarter we planned that Kingdom Come: Deliverance development will be finished on December 2015 on both PC and consoles. After eight months of development we have working builds on consoles, but we definitely need to spend much more time on the optimization. We can’t confirm that the game will be on every platform from day one, but we are working on it.

Rashid Sayed: What kind of graphical options are you going to provide to the PC player?

Jiří Rýdl: We plan to offer similar option as a recently released title Ryse on PC. Ryse is looks very good, hopefully we can make Kingdom Come Deliverance even better.

Wednesday - January 14, 2015

Kingdom Come - New Video Preview

Exploring a bit of the world on thePC in the game Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Though the game is coming for both next gen systems currently the Alpha, which is mostly a landscape tech demo, is just out on PC. So lets walk the walk and talk about some of the technical aspects of the game. Karak most concentrates on graphics at this point.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Interview @ XP4T

XP4T: How did you come up with the idea of making an open-world RPG set in medieval times? And why not an adventure game or an RTS?

J.R.: There are two guys behind the idea – Martin Klima and Dan Vavra, game developers with strong RPG background. Have you heard about Original War, Vision (not released) or Mafia? Mafia is definitely well known around the world, and Martin is also co-creator of the best-selling pen&paper RPG in Czech Republic named Dragons Lair. You can see now, that the common project had to be an RPG ;-]

XP4T: What are your feelings about the Kickstarter campaign? Did it give you something more, apart from the financial aspect and some kind of morale boost?

J.R.: First of all we have got loud and clear YES from 35k backers on Kickstarter for a project, which was „not appealing enough“ to many publishers. And thanks to them we are still here working on Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Thank you all once again!

XP4T: You call the game a “realistic open world game”. How would you define that “realism”? Does it only pertain to the combat mechanics, or could we consider the game a source of some interesting knowledge about the Middle Ages?

J.R.: We have a special department for research! They read through all the stuff from libraries and chronicles, look up the documentation and pictures and also visit real places from the game to shoot there. Of course the game can’t be completely realistic or you would spend whole time in the forge making hoes ;-] We also cooperate with the best fencers and bow masters in Czech Republic to gain the knowledge about the 15th century combat techniques. They are very helpful!

P4T: How much fantasy will be there in Deliverance? How solid is the factual basis for Deliverance’s story and setting?

J.R.: No fantasy at all, there are no dragons or spells! The main story is based on the historical events described in chronicles and other resources, but life of a smith Henry is of course made up by Dan and team of designers. You don’t find story of poor peasants in chronicles usually. But it doesn’t mean it is not interesting, you can live through very important times of Holy Roman Empire!

Sunday - December 21, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - New Alpha Update

by Couchpotato, 05:13

Warhorse Studios has finally released the delayed Alpha update that adds alchemy to Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Here is the latest kickstarter update with the information.

For all backers with Baron tier or higher there is an alpha update of Kingdom Come: Deliverance just in time for Christmas! In this update you can try the alchemy minigame and a special quest from Daniel Vávra, the lead designer of Warhorse Studios. How was the alchemy minigame prepared, explains Jakub Guman in our last video news.

Kingdom Come - Interview @ Digital Digging

DD – The Kickstarter goal to introduce the miller’s daughter as a playable character has been successful – will she have her own time-line, and if so will it precede that of Henry, or run alongside?

JR – Well, I don’t want to spoil the game too much :-] You will be able to play a few quest as a millers daughter, and if you do it well, you will help Henry in a major way!

DD – Will we be experiencing seasons in Kingdom Come: Deliverance? Will there, for instance, be rainy seasons (similar to a British summer), and Autumn gales? And if so, would they be synced to the player’s location?

JR – The story is not long enough to see snow or falling the leafs from the trees, but the weather changes will be included.

Wednesday - December 03, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Video Update #9

by Abharsair, 10:59

In his latest video update (#9), Daniel Vavra of Warhorse Studios talks about the Tech Alpha update, bugs, a new stretch goal, and more.

You are welcome to our new video update about repairing bugs in the Tech Alpha (introducing Anna from QA), about December Alpha update with map, skip time and secret minigame, about 1st person vs 3rd person dilemma and last but not least the secret game... Mortal Vavra!

Friday - October 31, 2014

Kingdom Come - Video Preview @ Eurogamer

Remember Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the next-gen medieval RPG that has no fantasy? It's playable, and it's a sight to behold. More than one person has stopped to look over my shoulder, drawn in by the idyllic countryside scene.

This is a technical alpha, a kind of interactive technical demonstration. There is a quest, but it's designed more to test the quest giving system than to enthral. There's combat only in the shape of archery and an archery range.

Remember, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is still a year out - at least - on PC, and it was only Kickstarted at the beginning of the year, although plenty of work was done before then. Incidentally there are console ambitions, but there's nothing set in stone.

Developer Warhorse Studios has also spent time moving office and laying the foundations for the development process ahead. Given all that, there are bugs, as there should be, and they're amusing to come across - that's why I've made a gallery.

I should also say that the encoding process isn't particularly kind to the game, which is powered by CryEngine in case you're wondering. The frame-rate and textures are much more fluid and crisp in the flesh.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - New Screenshots

The Early Alpha build of Kingdom Come: Deliverance has been released to the game’s backers, and Reddit’s member ‘thatguythatdidstuff‘ has shared a number of screenshots, showing its glorious visuals. Kingdom Come: Deliverance targets a 2015 release. And since this game is powered by CRYENGINE, we’ll be sure to conduct a tech interview sometime next year. Enjoy!

Thursday - October 23, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Alpha Released

by Couchpotato, 06:24

The next update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance has information the games early Alpha is now available to all backers who pledged at the Baron Tier or higher.

We proudly present you the Tech Alpha version of Kingdom Come: Deliverance! This is a very important milestone for us as it gives us the first chance to show you what’s already been created and what we are aiming for. At the same time also providing us with the first chance to get direct feedback from you

Your feedback is very important to us in the following steps of development. Seeing videos and screenshots is nice, but touching and feeling the interactive piece with all your senses is way better. Therefore backers with the Baron Tier and higher will get the chance to meet Henry and experience his life in 1403.

Usually Alpha version means that you get a finished game with plenty of bugs, rough edges and missing parts. We would like to approach the Alpha early access phenomenon a bit differently. So how our Alpha look like? Our Alpha version is more likely a Technical Alpha.

What does that mean? The Tech Alpha version of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a collection of several technical aspects and game mechanisms in a more or less advanced state of development. The playable content will grow in stages (updated versions approximately every two or three months), adding new aspects, settings or game mechanics to the Alpha. You’ll get the chance to become acquainted with Kingdom Come: Deliverance step by step and can delve into more and more of our world as the amount of the content grow. Interested?

Kingdom Come - ZTG GameDev Convention

How about a small trip to Poland?

Meet us at this year's ZTG – GameDev Convention) in Poznan, PL.

On October 25th and 26th you will meet over 90 speakers from all around the world. With some special highlights like CD PROJEKT RED creators of The Witcher. But the biggest highlight of course… DAN VAVRA and JOANNA NOWAK from Warhorse Studios - we will talk about the historical background and accuracy in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Check it out!

Couchpotato: Thank you for agreeing to answer a few questions in your busy schedule. So my first question would have to be how is development coming along for the game? Any setbacks or other problems?

Jiri Rydl: Sure there are problems, like in any software development process :-] For instance we postponed early alpha access from September to October. But we also were able to move into new offices, hire 50 new people and build our own motion capture studio in last six months, so its obvious we fight some minor issues every day. But the coffee machine is working :-]

Couchpotato: The last update announced the Alpha is targeted for October can you briefly talk about what will be included?

J.R.: As we already mentioned on Kickstarter, this is more or less a technology demo with some basic principles to see. You will be able to walk around small village with a few NPC to watch their day/night routine. It is the starting environment for future updates with horse riding or swords fights.

Couchpotato: Congratulations on achieving the $2 million dollar stretch goal for better voice-overs. A few of our members think the money could of been spent elsewhere, What do you guys think?

J.R.: It is just one of our stretch goals, it doesn't mean that we spent two millions for hiring George Clooney :-] It means that we can try to reach some more worldwide known names to help us with the voice overs. Some backers are already sending their recommendations who they would like to hear, thus you can see that it is important question at least for some of them.

Couchpotato: I was curious if you guys have had any publishers contact you after Daniel Vavra wrote earlier this year that none of them where willing to publish your game?

J.R.: The publishers are still in touch with us, but we dont need each other right now - we have the production costs covered and the game is not ready for publishing :-] But we can talk about possible cooperation in the future again.

Couchpotato: Since your game was one the bigger kickstarters funded this year can you share some your experience with crowd-funding, and maybe give a few pointer for smaller indie developers?

J.R.: Spend a lot of time with the research of both successful and unsuccessful campaigns, invest some money to selected projects to experience the process, prepare all of the updates ahead and be ready to answer a lot of questions during the campaign!

Wednesday - October 08, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Early Alpha Teaser

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is first-person, open-world realistic RPG set in medieval Europe. Enjoy unique melee combat, castle sieges, battles and quests in this epic RPG.Pre-alpha version for backers available on October 22nd.

Wednesday - October 01, 2014

Kingdom Come - $2 Million Goal Reached

by Couchpotato, 05:16

Warhorse Studios announces the $2 Million Goal for Kingdom Come: Deliverance has been reached on the games website. The game will now have better voice overs.

The clever detectives among you must have realized… We reached our $2,000,000 goal! “Better Voiceovers”! And now we have defined our next stretch goal. Thank you guys for helping us reach this epic milestone!

There is no reason to stop this momentum. At $2,100,000 we will create an illustrated ingame codex. The Codex will contain true facts about the life and times of every pivotal person, including the stories behind each interesting location in the game.

This way we can maximize the immersion into our world. The codex shall be your guideline of the historical background of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Learn more about life in medieval Bohemia, the major players of the story as well as the civil war our hero Henry is cast into.

Saturday - September 13, 2014

Kingdom Come - Interview @ TechRaptor

Daniel Vavra is interviewed on TechRaptor to talk about GamersGate, and the gaming industry. I will remind everyone to keep it civil this time, or I will lock the thread.

What is the biggest difference in the gaming industry when comparing now to when you worked on Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (2002)? Better or worse?

The industry is much better now. We can be independent. We can self-publish our games, even on consoles. We can speak directly to our fans through social networks. There are new ways to fund development. All that is awesome and ideal for growth of the scene and more original games. There are also many more communication channels – social media, Youtubers, bloggers. Back in the day, the Internet was very small, paper mags held all the power, and the journalists asked boring questions like “how many weapons/cars/levels are you going to have?” I was trying to write a sophisticated mature story, and most of them wanted to know if it’s going to be possible to drive over people. Now, when I am trying to make mature realistic historic game, some people ask why we don’t have female knights.

Will the GamerGate issue have any real effect on your approach to your upcoming game, Kingdom Come: Deliverance? That could be changing a character, a story, or part of the world.

No. We had a strong playable female character before all this started. We have gay characters in the game, and we have different minorities in the game, because all I want is to have a mature, strong story. A story that I wanted to tell for years, and I am not going to change it because of outside pressure.

Tuesday - September 02, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - AAA As An Indie

Making Games has posted a new article for Kingdom Come: Deliverance with Creative Director Daniel Vavra about the dark side of AAA production.

Building a AAA medieval game as an Indie studio is tough. Experience and passion won’t do the trick alone. Simply put: you need money! A lot of money!

Our original plan for Kingdom Come was to develop a prototype in 15 months and show it to all the publishers. Given our original commencement day this was supposed to fall on September/October 2012. Unfortunately, there were some delays when starting the company, and the deadline shifted to Christmas 2012. We didn’t realize at first that you can’t actually sell anything but trees, turkeys and trinkets at this time of the year. We shifted our deadline to February and that gave us space to improve the thing (and it also cost us some extra money).

In the end we moved the presentation till after Christmas which gave us more time to improve the planned features and add some extras. We created more cutscenes and dialogues than we originally planned, we had a completely functional GUI and map, and we even had details like accurate item pick up: the character will actually correctly grab the item it is picking up. I was really proud about our final build because it contained almost 100 per cent of what planned for it, looked very good and didn’t crash (almost).

Thursday - August 28, 2014

Kingdom Come - Video Update #7 Released

Check our new video update #7. Dan talks about the upcoming Tech Alpha, our new composer, our new merchandise and so on. You can still support the game at http://pledge.kingdomcomerpg.com/ See you there, thank you!

Kingdom Come - Interview @ Area Autodesk

The Area: We are happy and very excited to have the chance to speak with Warhorse Studios, arguably one of the hottest game studios in the Czech Republic. Back in February, Warhorse Studios completed their Kickstarter campaign, where upon asking for £300,000, were instead greeted with a little over $1.8 million USD. Congratulations on such a successful campaign! That said - once you start factoring in all of the actual costs needed to make the scale of game that you have in mind, this money is maybe just enough to cover things like salaries, hardware, software/game engine license, rent, and other general expenses for running a company. Something that you most certainly already know! So, Dan, how and when did Warhorse Studios and "Kingdom Come: Deliverance" become a reality?

Dan Vávra: Warhorse was established about two years ago by myself, Martin Klíma and several veterans from the Czech gaming industry and the reason was simple – there was no chance to work on games that we would like to make in any existing studios. And since we wanted to work on something new and innovative and there was zero chance that we could do it under a big publisher's wings, we started a new company.

The Area: Certainly the history of "Mafia" and subsequent titles are known amongst gamers, but for those who only know you for the first time through "Kingdom Come: Deliverance", can you give a bit of background on yourself?Dan Vávra: I am part of the 80's computer generation – people who grew up with the first 8-bit computers, played the first games on the ZX Spectrum and C64 and started to make their own stuff on the Amiga. I started as an artist in Illusion Softworks and after some minor work on its first game “Hidden and Dangerous”, I went on to be the Writer, Designer and Director on “Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven”. I wrote and designed “Mafia II” and worked on some others, sadly unreleased projects.

The Area: As overseer in the production of this game and making sure that all gears are greased, so to speak, what are some of the main tasks you have to take care of?

Dan Vávra: I am the Creative Director, so I have my fingers in most aspects of the game. But my biggest task is of course design and writing.

Our game is so massive, that there is no chance I would be able to write everything myself, so we have seven other writers and lots of scripters ... I work kinda like a show runner on TV – I work with other writers, prepare concepts for the story, review their work, we brainstorm a lot and the I write parts of the story myself.

Friday - July 18, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Now Hiring

The latest kickstarter update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance brings news the developer is now hiring for a man/woman to help find, and work with a new publisher.

Do you know this man?

In this update we are going to talk about something else then development itself: the black art of selling the game, and why we need your help again.

The outcome of the Kickstarter campaign was a great vindication of our effort and it made possible an option we only dreamed about before: to go directly to market, without a publisher that funds the development. This is a very attractive proposition but there are several things we need to consider. Firstly, there is no such thing as going ‘directly to market’. At the very minimum we will have to deal with Valve, Microsoft and Sony – all of these companies are very nice to deal with, but they still are an intermediary between us and the players. Secondly, publishers do lot of useful things and could allow us to bring the game to more players, for example by providing more localizations or by increasing awareness of the game among the gamers.

Since the end of the Kickstarter campaign we have been approached by several distributors or publishers, with different offers, some seem very good. As we were pondering these, we came to realize that this may be a skill we are missing: Dan knows a lot about design and what makes games fun, I, hopefully, know something about production and about keeping the development on time, but neither of us is a real salesman.

So this is where you come in. We are looking for a person that would join our team as a Chief Commercial Officer. This is a fairly senior position and we are looking for somebody who has experience with games business. It can be somebody from a game publisher who wants to come over to the Light Side, it could be somebody from a game developer who is looking for a new challenge, it could be anybody who has skills and experience in doing business with games.

Formal description of this position can be found on our LinkedIn page.

All our backers are people interested in games, many of you work in the industry and even if you don’t, I bet you know somebody who does. If someone’s name flashed across your mind when you were reading the last paragraph, please do us a favor and point them in our direction. Or, if you are interested yourself, of course do not hesitate to get in touch. This position is a tremendous opportunity to join our team and shape our policy toward publishers and distributors from the ground up. We are still small studio, our management structure is very, very flat and you will not be burdened by cumbersome bureaucracy.

Thursday - July 17, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Interview @ Cliqist

Cliqist : Once the $2,000,000 stretch goal is reached, what additions or changes can we expect to see to Kingdom Come: Deliverance?

Jiri Rydl : First of all we have to keep our promise and start to talk about the best voice overs we would like to hear in our game. It is not an easy task – you can’t just walk into Hollywood and talk to actors :-]

Cliqist : What has been the most challenging component for Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s development?

Jiri Rydl : The whole game is a big challenge :-] From development point of view it is probably our unique system for clothing, which helps us to create living world full of people with their own style.

Cliqist : If there will be a beta for backers, is there a release date in mind for it?

Jiri Rydl : Beta should be released in Q3 2015, but you can try alpha in the meantime. Alpha version should be available in September/October this year.

Wednesday - July 09, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Home Sweet Home

by Couchpotato, 18:54

Warhorse Studios has posted the next update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance with a status update on the new office, and talk about the development of the game.

Home Sweet Home

When we founded Warhorse we could watch from the windows of our new offices the demolition of an old factory, which gradually turned into a huge hole in the ground, from which a new building started to emerge. Every day we could follow the erection of this mega office building, in the bowels of which there was also to be a massive concert hall one day. It was surprising how few laborers there were working on the construction. At the time there were only nine of us. There were certainly more of them and we used to joke "Let's see who gets the job done first - us building our virtual world, or them building a real world edifice!"

Agile Development

And what else is new here apart from the move? It seems we have finally reworked the plan as we decided last month and began applying agile development and combined teams of people from various areas, who are working on one thing at the same time. The first major task was the implementation of an alchemistic "mini game", which isn't mini at all, but a relatively massive game in its own right. One of our new designers, Jakub, is in charge of it. When we were dealing together with the alchemy on paper, we came across a whole range of problems, as well as the fact that he didn't know which of our ideas were feasible and which weren't.

Now he has at hand two programmers, an animator and several graphic designers and they deal with the whole thing as a team. They were a little surprised at the outset that no one was strictly dictating to them how it was supposed to be and, on the contrary, that they should sort out the issues together and figure out what was possible, but it seems they are starting to get the hang of it. It’s something of a trial by fire. In the course of it, Jakub discovered much more quickly what was possible and what was not, and in a week they should be delivering a functioning alpha version of the mini game. To be honest, I am very curious whether it will be good and this approach proves itself, or whether it will be not so good and we will have to go back to the drawing board.

Alcoholism!

Just as in almost all RPGs, we too will have the option of drinking alcohol in the game, and since it will be there, we want it to lead somewhere. So it will influence the stats of the player’s character in some way. That’s normal too. Only we said to ourselves that we didn't want it just to add a bit of health and then have a fuzzy picture. We want the lightened mood to raise charisma, speech and stats, allowing the player, for example, to persuade an NPC more easily. We want it to raise his self-confidence, while advanced drunkenness would, on the contrary, lower his stats.

That's all still easy enough, only we also want differences between various types of alcohol - for bad quality booze to make the character more ill than quality booze, which would show in a longer lasting hangover, and maybe that bad beer would make him throw up sooner (there will be puking, of course).

Well, then, we add to that a quality that most items have anyway. Only what will be the difference between beer, wine and spirits, when they are all of the same quality? Well, a person has to drink a lot more beer than spirits to get drunk and it fills him up a lot more. So, since we have overeating, the beer will behave like food and it will be possible to get overfull before one gets drunk, or get poisoned if it’s bad booze, and then we might easily have a number of different beers of various quality and other parameters. But, since moderate indulgence in alcohol increases the player's positive stats, he could exploit it by maintaining a permanent state of tipsiness and we have to somehow pre-empt that.

Wednesday - June 18, 2014

Kingdom Come - 15th Century Vegetation

by Couchpotato, 06:01

Warhorse Studios has a new forum post for Kingdom Come: Deliverance where they take a look at how Vegetation would have looked like in the 15th century.

Spring is coming to an end and summer stands around the corner. As you probably know, KCD will also take place in springtime. After your grate discussion about arrow quivers I am wondering which vegetation was typical in the early 15th century. Which plants, weeds, crops and trees do you know? Let’s say goodbye to the spring with a discussion, pictures and facts about medieval vegetation in Central Europe.

Sunday - June 08, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - New Screenshots

Warhorse Studios have unleashed a trio of HD screenshots from Kingdom Come: Deliverance, showcasing the power of CryEngine in the beautifully rendered images. The screens illustrate horseback riding, an idyllic scene where a villager indulges in some fishing sitting atop a small wooden bridge, and a solider maintaining overwatch at a castle. The action RPG set in Medieval Europe is currently on track for a release in Q4 2015 for the PC, OS X and Linux, with the Xbox One and PS4 versions expected to follow at a later date.

Thursday - June 05, 2014

Kingdom Come - Post Funding Update #26

by Myrthos, 23:49

Dan Vávra, Creative Director for Warhors' Kingdom Come: Deliverancewrites in this Kickstarter update on the things that don't go that well in the development of the game, which is partly due to them doubling the team size.

Don’t get me wrong. Our design runs to several hundred pages - we don't pull the game out of thin air. Most of the features are described down to the minutest detail. Only then a situation come along where you are desperately trying to write the last few missing, but quite important features for the programmers, the designers meanwhile are working on lacking craft mechanisms and in the middle of it all ten new graphic and concept designers are asking for assignments. But to assign work to the graphic guys, you first have to read and comment the crafting design from the designers, which after two weeks of work by six people “surprisingly” runs to a hundred pages, and that you cannot read in five minutes.

So you make an agreement with the graphic artists that instead of creating assets for minigames they should first design situation plans and white boxes of the villages on the map and then start on the crafting next week after you've done your review. During the course of the revision, however, you discover that some of the designers haven’t quite gotten the idea of how the crafting should look, that two very similar activities from two different designers have completely different controls, and you will have to go over it with them, redo it and add some stuff that you didn't think of when conceiving the crafting, but turn out to be quite fundamental obstacles to its functionality.

So in the end it turns out that the graphic guys have to wait a week longer and the designing of features and handling the backlog will have to wait, too. The Boulder of Sisyphus has rolled back a bit. And then when you've finished all the crafting and show it to the programmers, they throw their hands up and tell you it can’t be done like that and they’re not going to waste two months of work on some nonsense like cooking and we should go and simplify it. So the graphic designers...

Sunday - June 01, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Preview @ Cliqist

by Couchpotato, 09:37

If you want to read another preview for Kingdom Come: Deliverance then head on over to Cliqist. Anyway it's nothing we haven't read before though.

The entire design of the game it meant to be as authentic as possible, including the attire, dialogue, and environment. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is meant to feel as if the player is directly in the year 1403, dealing with armies invading villages and sword fighting enemies.

A RPG just wouldn’t be the same without some sort of leveling or upgrading system though; so players have the option to design and create their own weaponry. All around the world are skill-based mini games to help improve one’s skill and equipment. Players can whittle away their days refining and upgrading weaponry or just making some alcohol and indulging in culinary masterpieces; there should be plenty around and about to occupy the player’s interest.

The combat system seems to be the most meticulously put together part of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Warhorse Studios actually brought in professional swordsmen for reference and tried to make the physics as realistic as possible. Battles aren’t frequent events and castle sieges are considered to be a highlight in the story; so when they happen there’s weight and significance. However, there will still be plenty of times when the player will be up against crowds of enemies, so gathering allies would be a great idea.

Kingdom Come - Back to Work Update

New features

Every few weeks we have a company-wide presentation of the new stuff that has been created during the previous weeks. Since, due to having to catch up on the whole backlog, I haven’t had much time for dealing with the actual development, I was quite surprised how many new things had been created.

In the first place, we have the archery practically done, including most of the RPG stats connected with it and I dare say it’s that sophisticated we could put out an archery simulator ;-) The scripters then set up shooting of forest game, so you can set out hunting hare with your new bow and I gotta say anyone who manages to hit one of those bunnies is a sharpshooter. It really is awesome.

Our AI has learned to get characters to create queues in front of a door, give right of way to each other and close doors behind them. The horse riding has improved a bit, so for example when the rider now jumps from his mount on a hill, he drops perpendicular to the ground, and on the other hand he can mount the horse even in relatively complicated conditions. The model of the horse itself is being redesigned. The former one was a little short and when galloping sometimes looked a bit funny, so the horses are getting new models and a new skeleton.

Crowd funding continues

The most important news for us is that we’ve finally launched our own crowdfunding platform. It really took us a long time due to the whole range of various issues that arise when you want to make a complex system that must have no glitches, in view of the fact that it’s about money.

Planning and design

As far as me and design are concerned, this month we still haven’t gotten into the working regime I’d like to see. Fortunately we’ve managed to sort out most of the backlog. We created a long-term roadmap of the tasks for the game. We’ve finally decided, hopefully, where we will be moving to next month, because we no longer fit into the existing space.

Kingdom Come - Interview @ Digital Digging

If your not interested in watching the video the site has provided a transcript.

I was lucky enough to secure an interview with the creative lead at Warhorse Studios, Dan Vávra, and have the opportunity to ask him some questions about what’s going on under the bonnet of their spectacular game, Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Saturday - May 03, 2014

Kingdom Come - Interview @ Worldsfactory

You mentioned that the world will be approximately large 9 km², containing “a sprawling city, vast forests, majestic castles, and dozens of villages and hamlets devastated by war”. However, the number seems fairly small when compared to other popular open world RPGs such as Oblivion or Skyrim, which are roughly four times that large; don’t you fear that locations will be a bit too close to each other?

Very good question, we were surprised by the numbers of other games as well :-) We tried a scientific approach and moved with a character from north to south in Oblivion. The run from the top of the map to the bottom took about 7 minutes. In Kingdom Come: Deliverance it took 7 minutes to run from the city to stable, which is about 1.5 km. The problem is probably in the scale and faster running. So the result is that you don’t have to be afraid of small space. You can get lost in the woods easily :-)How advanced is the AI system for noticing crimes? I’m kind of tired to either be able to steal anything without repercussions or to be captured by omniscient guards who had no chance of discovering the player character. Also, is it possible to escape out of jail and if so, will the player character be hunted across the land?

We have very advanced AI implemented in the game. Every guard has its own track to follow, of course they can see only in the line of sight and they sometimes need a break. So you can watch them and wait for the break or make some false alarm on the other side of a village to wile them of your way to loot. If you are seen, you will be probably attacked and then put in jail. Our crime system also counts with situations where nobody knows who is the criminal and the punishment is not only in the fine and jail, there is also some real punishment, but we will disclose this later.

Will there be companions to aid the player character in certain combat situations and if so, are they customizable and/or is it possible to give them orders during fights?

Sometimes you will have to fight with more opponents and there could be someone to help you. But I wouldn’t call them companions. NPC in Kingdom Come: Deliverance have their own lives and they don’t want to join you on your dangerous quest :-) You can be accompanied by a dog on the other hand!

Kingdom Come - Interview @ PC Games Hardware

PC Games Hardware: The crowd- and privately funded Kingdome Come: Deliverance is one of the most ambitious games currently in development. Do you think that the greater part of the game-industry is funneled through a too-narrow path by the publishers and thus being held back in its evolution?

Dan Vávra: Yes, but I wouldn't say that it still is - it was. You don't need a publisher to develop and sell a game these days. Look at the Top 10 on Steam. 6 of 10 games are indies. Two years ago it would be one. Publisher model as it worked so far is a thing of the past.

PC Games Hardware: Some gamers are quite hyped by the thought of crowd-funding, some are cautiously reserved in fear of being disappointed or ripped-off and some of us are both. There's a difficult path in between for a developer to tread. How do you plan on doing so?

Dan Vávra: Game development is a risky process and everyone should be aware of this, especially when supporting someone on Kickstarter. Even the best developers make mistakes, games get delayed, features are changed on the go. Game development is research, not just manufacturing. There is lot of unknowns that can turn out to be more complicated than expected. So there is lot of risk, but the results could be awesome when things turn out right in the end. And that's why we do it and that's why its worth it to support new projects. We are trying to be open about what we do and how we do it. If there are troubles, we will tell people about it. People invested money in us, but we also invested a lot, I spent all my savings to get this project going and several years of work, lots of nerves, so I want this to be made the same or more than anyone else. :)

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Paypal Pledges

Crowd Funding Revolution

In the past, when you wanted to develop a big AAA game, you needed a publisher. You needed to convince guys in suits, who don’t understand games at all, to give you money. Those guys usually don’t like original unproven ideas and so most of the games were uninspired clones of each other. Fortunately these times are over.

Our game is being developed without the aid of traditional publishers, so it relies on your support and funding from private investors. Originally we tried to approach publishers, but they refused to finance project they considered to be too risky and niche.

After two years of development without finding a publisher to finance us, it seemed that we would have to close doors. So we tried our last chance and started a Kickstarter campaign. And it turned out that our game is anything but niche. We raised over £1.1 million (US$1.82 million) within one month and the response from gamers and media was awesome.

The game was saved and overnight it grew to be one of the most expected projects. We can hardly expressed how we felt after months of desperation. Now we are independent of publishers, funded by private investors and our fans. This gives us creative freedom to make the best game we can. If you like what we do, please support our game. In exchange you will get a chance to influence its design and play an early access version.

Help us to bring our vision to life. Help us to create not the 176th free-to-play mobile RPG MMO Elven village-builder with DIAMONDS™, but a unique, engaging experience we think you’d like to play. Every extra dollar will allow us to make the final product that much better because it means more money for development and more support from our investor.

Wednesday - April 02, 2014

Kingdom Come - Post-Funding Update #24

by Myrthos, 16:02

Warhorse Studio have just posted a new Kickstarter update for Kingdom Come in which they talk about the console version, web store, GDC, publishing woes, what they are planning for the next months and the increased size of the project team.

What is worth considering, though, is a distribution deal – one fine day we will need hundreds of thousands (one hopes) of actual boxes for the stores and for that we will need someone who knows what they’re doing, because it’s certainly not our thing. So cutting a deal with someone who will put the game out in their boxes and take a cut of the profits, leaving us with creative freedom, is quite a sensible option.

We’ve already had a whole bunch of meetings with such potential partners. We’ve also heard, of course, from publishers, though mostly just the ones who showed the greatest interest even before our campaign. The offers were a mixed bag and it can be said that the smaller the publisher, the more sensible the offer. It seems the big publishers have yet to grasp the concept that unless they offer serious money and accept a significant share of the risk, nobody actually needs them for anything anymore.

A funny thing happened, where a big publisher described the massive costs they intended investing in marketing, on account of which we would have to give them half our profits. Then a big, prestigious marketing agency told us they would do exactly the same thing for half the cost if we dealt directly with them. What would you do in a situation like that? A deal like that might be OK for someone who doesn't have a dime and really needs someone to pay their marketing costs. But if you do have the cash for that...?

It seems that the smaller publishers are much more sensible. I get the feeling they have a much better idea about the way the world is moving.

I’ve been telling everyone from the very start of the company that it would probably be best for us to put the game out ourselves (if we had the cash for it, of course). Following all the meetings, the rest of our GDC delegation also came to a similar conclusion, including our investor’s representative. We can easily put out the digital version of the game for PC and console and share with smaller distributors, who have been much more forthcoming than the big guys, on the boxed game. In the past you needed a publisher as a go-between for a whole range of services that developers didn't have access to, but today the only thing they have going for them is money, and if they don't want to spread it round or you don't need it, then they're basically good for nothing.

Friday - March 21, 2014

Kingdom Come - Preview @ PC Gamer

An RPG lives or dies by its quests, however. Thankfully, Deliverance’s look fresh and dynamic. Warhorse talk of leading an army to besiege a bandit fort, playing a medieval investigator searching for a mass murderer, interrogating, bribing and threatening people, and even (tugs at collar) seducing ladies. Each quest has multiple solutions – whether by sword, smarts or swoon-worthy charm.

For Vávra, quests must engage. “Collect seven pieces of the magic sword/staff/amulet/spear and use it against mystical evil which is going to destroy the world?” That’s not quite Vávra’s style. “Some want NPCs to react naturally to your actions, we want the world to work naturally. And when you do that and do it right, then most clichés disappear and even small basic quests like ‘bring this item from place A to place B’ make sense and feel authentic.”

The first 30-hour act of Kingdom Come: Deliverance launches in the next six months. Then, nine months apart, Warhorse will release a further two acts. Take the fantasy away from swords an shields, and you have a subject matter that’s clearly captured the imagination of its backers. But how far will it take its realism? Permadeath via a gammy leg after 20 hours would no doubt win a few people over.

Kingdom Come - Interview @ Gamingbolt

Rashid Sayed: You guys recently claimed that the map size of Kingdom Come Deliverance will be as big as Red Dead Redemption. Is this the case of all the three acts combined or is this the size of the first act?

Dan Vávra: First Act only. Second Act will add a new map, which will be little smaller and will take place on both maps and third Act will be very big.

Rashid Sayed: How are you tackling level design in such a massive open world, given that there a ton of activities you can do?

Dan Vávra: That’s is one of major challenges – make it all work together =). We are developing set of tools to make it as easy as possible. We have our own software for writing quets which directly exports data into the game. We have set of rules which are applied to every quest design. But it’s still going to be hard =).

Rashid Sayed: The game promises to tell a non-linear story. In that case how are you handling the mission structure? Is the player allowed to complete missions in any order and whenever they want?

Dan Vávra: We needed to find balance between good story and nonlinearity. So we are not going to be as free as lets say New Vegas or Witcher 2. The main story has some branches, but still leads to one historic event that can’t be changed. What can be changed are fates of different characters and their relationship to you. All quests on the other hand could be completed in several different ways.

Rashid Sayed: Most role playing games seem to deviate from providing rich side questions by making the player do silly things. How are you planning to keep side quests relevant to the main story line?Dan Vávra: We did lot of research at the beginning and the world really lives. So when we will try to utilize all of our knowledge, world mechanics and situations, while sticking to our “authenticity is everything” philosophy, we have tons of interesting believable and natural situations for quests.

Friday - February 28, 2014

Kingdom Come - Inteview @ Gamestar

It was really interesting to read that blog about how the project was funded. I am pretty sure you never underestimated the risks you were taking with Kingdom Come since you're familiar with how the industry works. What motivated the team to start working on such expensive and large, ambitious debut project, obviously an AAA-scale title and not something more humble?

We love the era and setting and we love RPGs. And since there were no games that would mix the setting with our favorite RPG mechanics, we had to develop one:)

Couldn't help but think Mount & Blade — a series so familiar to historical reenactment enthusiasts — when I was reading Kingdom Come description. Are you familiar with the series? How different is your concept and vision of the gameplay mechanics from those of TaleWorlds?

Of course we know MB. I played it, but less than I would like to. We share the setting and the ambition to be authentic, but they are true procedural sanbox, while we are more based on story -open world, but with strong storyline. Our combat will also be a lot different than theirs.

According to some of the Western resources, the game events will be tied to a particular historical period. What is the time span the plot is going to cover? As far as we understand, the game is set during the interregnum era with Hohenstaufen fallen, Habsburg dividing the territories and Kurfürst emerging? Does our hero start his way to the throne here? Or are you going to send players to the unquiet era after the death of Frederick III?

Its set in 1403. Emperor Charles IV. died some time ago and his two sons Sigismund and Wenzel the Idle started to fight over the throne of the empire. So its about Luxembourg dynasty, but you are right as well, Habsburgs and Kurfursts were involved a lot in this.

Thursday - February 27, 2014

Kingdom Come - Preview @ RedBull

Like Oblivion, the story Kingdom Come will tell will be reliant on the choices you make and the way you play. If you want to creep about as a skulking assassin or ride into battle on horseback brandishing a flail, that's fine with Warhorse. If you'd rather travel from town to town singing as a bard, well, that's fine too. Sort of. The stated goal is to create an epic, non-linear story without resorting to usual staples of dragons and magic. "Dungeons, no Dragons".

"Fantasy might be mainstream in games, but when you turn on the TV, go to cinema or library, its quite the opposite - history is the mainstream," says Vávra. "People like TV shows like Vikings, Rome, The Tudors; movies like Braveheart. And the same people also play games, but there aren't many games being made for them. The only thing they can do is buy the next closest thing: a fantasy RPG. But if you look at the success of Total War series or indie games like Mount and Blade, you realize that the audience is there."

The game's story revolves around the plight of your unlucky protagonist, whose career as a humble blacksmith takes an unexpected turn when his family are slain by an invading army and he becomes embroiled in a plot to seize power by an unlawful king. Unlike your standard fantasy RPG, you've not been blessed with a special birth sign, your coming was not foretold in the stars. You'll need to eat and sleep regularly, as in many games' hardcore modes (and, you know, real life). In fact, you're so pointedly un-magical that food left in your inventory will rot and go bad. Dragonborn you are not.

Wednesday - February 26, 2014

Kingdom Come - Post-Funding Update #23

Badge matching process completed

This is the follow up to our last update. Our badge matching process is completed and if you have used the same email address on Kickstarter and when registering on our forums, you should have the right badge now.

We have simplified the process in case you are using two different emails: you can now go to your account Preferences and enter the Kickstarter email there. After a short while your badge will be updated.

If there are any problems, please email kickstarter@warhorsestudios.cz

PS: In comments to our previous update, many people mentioned the codes we used to send out during the campaign. Please let me clarify this: these codes were a stop-gap measure before the Kickstarter could provide us with email addresses of our backers. Now that we have those, we are not going to be sending the codes anymore. Your email address you used on Kickstarter is all you need to get the right badge.

Tuesday - February 25, 2014

Kingdom Come - Post-Funding Update #22

by Couchpotato, 06:17

Warhorse Studios talks about your forum badge in the next post-funding update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Not really exciting but still of importance to some.

Your forum badge

Hello and thank you again for backing our game! One of the rewards common to all backers is access to our forums. These are already up and running and many of our backers have their accounts there. It’s time to make sure everybody has the right badge according to their pledge.

The Kickstarter have kindly provided us with the email addresses of our backers and we shall be now matching them to the ones on forums. One of the following things can happen:

You used the same email address on Kickstarter and on our forums: you don’t have to do anything, your badge will be updated to reflect your pledge.

You used a different email for Kickstarter and forums: please send an email to kickstarter@warhorsestudios.cz to the effect “my Kickstarter email is someone@somewhere and when registering at forum.kingdomcomerpg.com I used someoneelse@somewhereelse” and we shall match the emails manually.

You haven’t registered on the forums yet and you can use the same email you are using on Kickstarter: we can match your pledge automatically and you just have to register on the forums (the matching process may take some time though, don’t be worried if your badge does not show correctly during first fifteen minutes or so after the registration)

You haven’t registered on the forums yet and for some reason you cannot use the same email address: please register and send an email to kickstarter@warhorsestudios.cz, like the one described above.

We expect the matching process to be finished within next 24 hours, we shall let you know when it’s complete so that you can verify your badge. See you on our forums!

The day we launched our campaign, I woke up in the morning to find we were the lead article on the front page of GameSpot, with our artwork all over the screen. Wow. And there was so much more to come. The response from gamers was even better. Better than we could ever wish for. It became clear that there are quite a few people out there who have similar tastes in games to our own.

The main “reason” we were rejected by all the publishers turned out to be totally false. Not only do people not need fantasy or magic or dragons to enjoy a game, they desperately want games without them! Along the way, we were fortunate to receive support and promotion for the game from such personas as Chris Roberts, Brian Fargo, Sven Vincke, and others. It’s really been one helluva ride.

We have raised almost 400% of our original goal. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is among the 30 most-funded Kickstarter projects of all time and in the top 15 of videogame projects. We have 35 thousand backers, with an average pledge of US$52. Our YouTube channel has more than a million views.

Simply said: You are awesome! Thank You!

They also share information on what happens next.

So, what’s next? Now we have to make the game! We feel a lot of responsibility and obligation to deliver on our vision after so many people put so much of their trust into our project. It’s going to be hard to satisfy all those expectations, but we will do all we can not to disappoint you.

I will finally have time to sit down with the designers and start writing the quests and storyline. Next month, we will be joined by twelve new colleagues (some of them quite experienced senior developers from the recently disbanded 2K Czech studio in Prague). In just a few months, we plan to grow to more than 50 people, so we can make the big game we first dreamed of.

Of course, we will continue to openly blog about development, as we have in the past. Since we don’t need to hide anything anymore, it should be even more interesting. You can follow our blog here.

We will also continue to raise money on our own webpage, where you will be able to get most of the same, terrific rewards and early access to the game, if for whatever reason you didn’t or couldn’t pledge in the past month. Our shop will accept PayPal and Amazon Payments, as many of you asked. We will continue to add new stretch goals as we can.

As promised, we will release an Alpha version in about six months to all those who pledged Baron-level support and higher, and we’ll be carefully looking at your feedback on our forums, which are open to all of our backers. By mid-2015, we should release the Beta, followed by the final version of Act I.

So, on behalf of the whole team, thank you again for your generous support and enthusiasm. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we are going to have a little celebration!

Unto the last 24 hours!

We are now about to enter the final stretch: the last 24 hours of our campaign. It was a great ride and we want to THANK YOU for taking us along! We’ve received more than 17k comments, 3k personal messages, 5k likes, and most importantly tons and tons of positive support. You are the ones who made this game possible!

It now looks like we are going to burst through the £1m (about US$1.67m) stretch goal and who knows how far we can get before the last whistle. For this last surge we wanted to introduce one last stretch goal. We wanted to add something that makes the game better for all players and something that makes the game special. Our £700k pounds stretch goal was ‘Performance Capture’ and we decided to build on this.

A performance capture is as good as the actors that use it, and in fact many people have already asked which actors might get involved – talent like Sean Bean, Brian Blessed and even John Cleese are often mentioned. We love Sean Bean, especially because of his less known indie medieval movie Black Death, and Brian Blessed was in Dan’s mind when he was writing one of the nobles for the game. Obviously we share these sentiments with our supporters!

We already started talking to different talent agencies and we have a rough idea how much we would need to hire our favorite actors. So, we’re confident that IF we reach our next stretch goal (£1.2m), we will be able to hire at least one high profile actor or actress. In the game, you’d be able to not only hear their voice, but also see their likeness and their acting abilities (thanks to performance capture).

Wednesday - February 19, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - News Roundup

Well it has been a busy week for Warhorse Studios. The kickstarter has 36 hours left, and they already achieved £945,706 of the £300,000 goal.

The first part of the roundup is about a new update with information Warhorse Studios will be sharing tech with Star Citizen. Here are the details.

Welcome Star Citizens!

When I was 15 years old kid, one of my favorite games for my Amiga 500 was Wing Commander. Damn, that game was like playing Star Wars movie! It had fancy 3D graphics way ahead of its time, awesome story with cool animations and its creator Chris Roberts became my idol. I was never hooked up on any other space sim since then.

22 years later I saw a Kickstarter campaign for Star Citizen and I was sold immediately. It just got everything no other space sim got for last twenty years and it was obvious after the first ten seconds of the trailer. This was the ultimate space game I and immediately pledged without even reading their Kickstarter page. I was not the only one and Star Citizen has become most successful crowd funded game of all time.

So it was logical that one year later, when we were preparing our own Kickstarter campaign, Star Citizen was our role model. You learn from the best. So you can imagine how happy we were when Chris Roberts appeared on the list of our backers, and you can’t even imagine how it felt when we received an email from Chris himself. He was telling us that he likes our stuff and since his team is using Cryengine as well, they would like to cooperate with us and share some technology! Who would have thought about this 23 years ago when playing Wing Commander?

So to to make long story short – we will share some of our tools with Star Citizen team and Deliverance will most likely have some tech from Star Citizen as well. Hell yeah!

The second part of the new-bit is about a new AMA on Reddit. It may answer some questions some of you still have about the game.

We are happy to answer: questions about setting, game mechanics, target platforms, technology, look-behind-scenes questions about dealing with publishers and platform holders.

Tuesday - February 18, 2014

Kingdom Come - Update# 17, Consoles

by Couchpotato, 05:52

Warhorse Studios talks about the console release of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and reveals the one million stretch goal. Here are the details.

Coming to Consoles!

This is going to be a brief but very important update. We originally announced our game for PC and next gen console. While we never doubted our technical ability to do it, we were not sure about the actual publishing and distribution. In the last console generation, it just wasn’t possible to have a game on console without an official publisher.

In this generation it’s going to be different though. We had lot of discussion with both Microsoft and Sony in the past weeks and we are happy to announce that the game concept of Kingdom Come: Deliverance was approved by both Sony and Microsoft for the next gen platform (PS4 and Xbox One).

Both companies are very eager to work with independent developers now and were really helpful in speeding up the whole process. We were provided with devkits and will get cracking on the console version right away.

And lets not forget the one million stretch goal.

About that stretch goal

It seems there is a possibility we will reach the magical 1 million threshold. This is great, but also tricky, because we need to announce a new stretch goal. It should be something special, something that wasn’t planned and something we really want to do.

At the same time, we still should be able to implement it within the limits of our budget that is, honestly, even with the great support from Kickstarter backers, still very tight, because our game is much more expensive than one million pounds.

We thought about it a lot and we all agreed that we would love to have dog in the game as a companion. Best friend who will follow you everywhere, help you in combat, warn you from danger when you sleep or go hunting with you. If we reach this goal, there will be dogs in the game and you will be able to own one. There will also most likely be dog related quests.

Monday - February 17, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Update# 16

Warhorse Studios has a new update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance about swords, action figures, coins, and engravings. All of which are add-ons, and backer rewards.

About those swords, action figures, coins and engravings

Various collectors’ items are part of our special editions. We are making an authentic medieval game, though, and we are loath to give our fans usual cheap trinkets. Know then, that everything you are going to get, are unique, bespoke crafted items, far cry from plastic tchotchke.

It may have something to do with the fact that Dan studied at School of applied arts in Turnov among engravers, smiths and goldsmiths, he doesn’t settle for less and knows a lot of craftsmen that can help us.

Friday - February 14, 2014

Kingdom Come - Update# 15, The Living World

Welcome to our fifth video update!

In this video update we would like to invite to you to come to explore our world, the world that comes alive with activities of NPCs that go about their daily routines as believably and intelligently as we can make them. Other characters react to your actions and even to actions of other characters – creating a truly emergent world.

Thursday - February 13, 2014

Kingdom Come - Editorial @ Press2Reset

Earlier this week, Warhorse Studios released a video showing the horse mechanics for its upcoming medieval sandbox RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance. They look hugely impressive. The animations are interesting and the actual movement of the horses is lifelike.

When the dev turned his horse, it looked especially good. From a stationary start, the horse dipped its head as the rider tugged the reins to the right. As the head turned so the body moved to follow. It was an elegant reversal of direction that took place in a very small area. This is the action so many game horses bungle: a turn is, in practice, two movements, not one – head, then body. Some games make a mess of this, placing a single pivot point through the center of the horse, like a carousel, and then giving it a massive turning circle as if it were some equine oil tanker.

Skyrim is a particular failure when it comes to horse movement. I still shudder at the recollection of those times when, halfway up a mountain pass, a nearby quest or onrushing powerful monster would require me to turn around. There soon followed the farcical sight of my horse turning in a wide circle, climbing the steep walls of the ravine as though he were a wall-of-death motorcyclist.

It was, in short, a mess. And Bethesda knew it, cheekily explaining away the poor mechanics with a tiny piece of lore that pointed out that the horses of Skyrim were of sturdy farmstock given to neither charging into battle nor nimble negotiations of the high passes – Shires horses, not destriers. Okay, Bethesda, we’ll let you have that one but, next time, proper horses, please.

Wednesday - February 12, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Interview @ Cliqist

Cliqist : Are you surprised at how quickly the Kickstarter campaign took off?

Dan Vávra : I believed that there is an audience for this kind of game and that with all the stuff we have it should be possible to reach our goal. Of course, that my confidence was a little shattered by the refusal from publishers, but if I didn’t believe that they were wrong, we wouldn’t have started the campaign. On the other hand we were not prepared that it would be so quick or for the great response from all different sides.

Cliqist : You’ve mentioned previously that you did a lot of Kickstarter research. What has been the difference between your campaign and the campaigns of other industry veterans who have struggled with getting funded?

Dan Vávra : I think, that the most important thing to do is to have good game and great stuff to show. Those who had problems usually didn’t have that much to show. There are very few campaigns that showed interesting, good looking game and didn’t get funding. Of all the campaigns out there, Chris Roberts did the best job. Period. So when I wasn’t sure how to do something, I looked how he did it.

Cliqist : When I saw your video on launch day and heard that the Kickstarter campaign was essentially a co-funding campaign I was nervous that there would be some backlash. Campaigns that have revealed similar funding plans in the past have been met with complaints and cynicism from people saying that they were only using Kickstarter as marketing and that it defeated the purpose of Kickstarter; but not you. Why is that?

Dan Vávra : I understand that. If I had the money to fund the game on my personal account I wouldn’t dare to go to Kickstarter. Or at least I would clearly state, that I will finance an extensive part of the budget from my own sources. Nobody likes greedy people who don’t want to take risks. You go to Kickstarter when there is no other way and it was exactly our case. If the Kickstarter wasn’t successful, the game would not happen. We have a strong investor, but after all the rejections from publishers, he really wasn’t throwing money in our direction. His money is not our money and we had to prove to him that the game is worth investing in and the only way we could come up with more was to go to gamers directly. The way it works also doesn’t mean, that the more money we raise, the less he will invest. Every penny we raise on top of our goal goes into the development as a bonus over our original budget, so we will be able to make the game better.

Tuesday - February 11, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Update#13 & 14

This is not the combat update – we are working on it and will post it soon.

In the meantime, I was thinking that it might be interesting to share some of the information from behind the scenes that we can see as the project creators (actually, before the project ends, we cannot see that much, but I'll share what we have).

The following graph shows the split between pledges made directly via Kickstarter and pledges made by people who came to Kickstarter from other sources. As you would expect, only minority of people goes directly to our Kickstarter project page, and even 25% seems a lot. Part of these 'unreferred' links are due to the URL shorteners (like the one we have on our Facebook page) , part may be due to people who block 'referrer' field in their browser.

This time we are bringing you something special: twelve minute video about our combat system. Good combat mechanics is at the heart of every RPG and we are very proud of ours. It's based on real-time collision detection and inverse kinematics; technologies that were difficult to use for game-critical mechanics on previous generation hardware. The result is a combat experience that looks and feels believable and natural, yet is not constrained to few sets of canned animations that have to be executed in perfect synchronization. The system seamlessly integrates things like interaction with environments, different heights of opponents or uneven terrain. Our combat is a blend of tactics and timing, skills of the player and stats of the character. But enough words, watch the video:

Sunday - February 09, 2014

Kingdom Come - Interview @ PCGMedia

What made you decide to develop a single-player first-person open-world RPG amidst multiplayer games with a similar settings like War of the Vikings and War of the Roses?

I love history and I always wanted to make such game. Our goal is to give you authentic experience what it’s like to be a knight in medieval times. Single player is still the best way how to achieve that goal. Multiplayer is definitely interesting, but its different kind of experience.

T

This year sees the launch of high profile single-player RPG titles like The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt and Dragon Age: Inquisition. What does Deliverance have that these well-known series do not?

We will probably have some game mechanics in common with The Witcher, which is a great series BTW as well as the books (Andrzej Sapkowski, author of The Witcher novels actually wrote a book from Czech history covering the same period as our game and the book is very good). But the difference is, that we are set in real believable world, with story based on historic events. In terms of gameplay, our combat system is probably our most interesting feature. Its based on authentic techniques and based on inverse kinematics, so its physically very accurate. We will have video update on this soon.

The game is set in 15th century Europe, how much will historical factors like disease and hygiene affect gameplay?

This period wasn’t as bad as people often think. It’s probably because most movies are about wars or some conflicts and plagues and during these times thinks are usually worse. It’s as if people were judging life in 20th century by the movie set in WWII. In real world, medieval society was very advanced. Crime was really low, maybe even better than in today’s big cities, society was able to take care of people in need like orphans or disabled and hygienic standards in 15th century were also much better than in early middle ages. The cities were really dirty though

How do you feel about the combat system of games like War of the Vikings and War of the Roses? Will Deliverance be anything like them?

As I said, we are very different. It may sound weird, but we don’t try to come up with any revolutionary new kind of controls, but at the same time, we did something nobody tried so far. We applied normal first person shooter controls to melee combat, added a few tricks and now we have something which is very simple and intuitive, has lot of options and is very close to the real world fencing.

Saturday - February 08, 2014

Kingdom Come - Update & Interview

New stretch goals

We are continuously amazed and humbled by the level of support our project receives. As our last stretch goal seems within our grasp, we are now announcing two new ones for 800 and 900 thousand pounds:

In-game combat lessons & companion video

We are working with top medieval martial arts experts and it would be a shame if their expertise does not get to shine in the game. With extra money, we shall add visual in-game fencing lessons. Every new move your character learns will be explained and shown in detail in-game by your teacher, the combat master.

We will also create detailed an instructional video that features basic combat techniques with different medieval weapons. The video will be free to access for everyone from the Knight tier upwards (inclusive).

Tournament mode

We are proud of the innovative combat in Kingdome Come: Deliverance. While our title is primarily a story-based game, the combat mechanics are very deep for those that are interested in seriously honing their skills. We want to give you a chance to do just that.

If we reach this stretch goal, we shall add a special Tournament mode, where you can don any equipment you like, choose your opponent or opponents and enter a medieval Tournament and try to win by authentic rules. There will be several combat modes and you can use them as a training as well as a way of earning bragging rights with your buddies.

I also have a new interview from a German site. Now before certain people complain the video is in English with German subtitles.

Friday - February 07, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Update# 11

Warhorse Studioshas a new update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance about horses, and how horse riding works in the game. Hopefully it's better than the last few games.

Welcome to our third video update!

This time we are going to talk about horses. Our gameplay programmer, Michal Hapala, who works on making horses easy to control, nice to look at and smart when they need to be, will walk you through canter and gallop in this video.

Tuesday - February 04, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Update# 10

Warhorse Studioshas a new update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance that gives us a look at the games character customization system.

Also the game has reached the £600,000 stretch goal, and that means the female prologue will be added to the game. I can't wait to see what the last two goals will be.

Welcome to our second video update!

In this update Dan talks about the character customization system we have built on top of Cryengine sandbox. It allows us to create hundreds of different NPCs by few simple clicks. And of course, it also allows the players to customize their characters. We hope you are going to like it as much as we do!

Sunday - February 02, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Update# 9, Forums

Warhorse Studioshas an update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance about the forums.

Forums are open!

One of the things we have promised to our backers is access to our forums. We are now ready to announce that the forums are open and invite you there.

Before we do, there are some things we would like to say: and I am sorry if this is going to be a bit technical.

Kickstarter – for obvious and very sensible reasons – does not share your email addresses with us until after the end of the campaign. For this reason we are only able to contact you by Kickstarter’s own messaging system. On the other hand we want you to have the right forum badge now, so we need a way of matching you to your pledge. We do this by sending you a unique code that you enter when creating your forum account.

Taken together this means we need to send a unique message to every backer via Kickstarter internal message system. This is going to be a slow process. We are asking you for patience, we think that all current backers should receive a message from us within next 48 hours.

The accounts that were not authenticated by the code have read-only access to forums anyway, so you will gain nothing by registering early. If you haven't entered your code during registration, you can always do it after, by editing your user preferences.

We hope you are going to like our forums and we shall be able to get into some real discussion about Kingdom Come: Deliverance. See you there!

Friday - January 31, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Update# 8

by Couchpotato, 03:57

Warhorse Studioshas an update for Kingdom Come: Deliverance about a new Tier.

New digital tier!

By popular demand we have added a digital equivalent of the special edition, the Viscount tier. With this tier you can get certain unique digital goodies: some of them stand in for their physical counterparts in the physical special edition: high resolution uncompressed image file with our poster, a PDF version of the Art book and 3D model of the Action figure for 3D printers.

Two digital rewards in this tier have no counterparts in the current physical editions: high-res map of the game world and PDF screenplay – a hundreds of pages long document that will have been used to record all dialogues in Act I.

We think that these two things could be valuable to other backers as well, so we shall be adding them to all tiers from Earl upwards. Kickstarter does not (for obvious reasons) allow the project creators to alter the description of rewards once somebody pledges for it, so we won't be able to update the tiers descriptions. The image that visualizes tiers and rewards should have the correct information though.

Thursday - January 30, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - News Roundup

by Couchpotato, 01:21

An IGN Editor by the name Meghan has a new post about having a female warrior.

When developer Warhorse Studios recently showed their game Kingdom Come: Deliverance to media outlets, they explained all the options available to your protagonist. You can explore a large open world, create your own weapons, build relationships with characters (including seducing the local ladies), lead an army, and even customize your armor and play style. Yet there is one option that isn't available: a female avatar. The absence of a female protagonist in light of a customizable hero (as opposed to a preset one) seems rather puzzling, but Warhorse Studios insists that Kingdom Come: Deliverance is meant to be as true to life as possible, and a chevalière simply isn't "realistic."

Dan V á vra: During the time in playing our game, people believed that the end of the world would take place very soon. Many revolutions started because the people believed that the end is near and if they would do something, it would come faster. Or would it go to heaven. Our game is about these days. Therefore, Kingdom Come("Thy Kingdom Come" from the Lord's Prayer, editor's note). And Deliverance (liberation) because our game is about also. From physical liberation of a character by our hero, and the inner liberation of our protagonists.

CB:How will you story and sandbox balance so that the two things are related yet and do not present themselves as two separate elements, such as was the case in Skyrim?

Dan V á vra: The main story is always waiting for you and you can do so, as in Skyrim, if you do not want to move forward in the history of all the open-world things. But we try to bring the story centered approach of The Witcher or Red Dead Redemption with the open-world aspect of Skyrim.

CB:What are the big battles and sieges work?

Dan V á vra: They serve as a high point in the story, which means there are only a few of them. You are also only one of many that can therefore give no commands. But still the player to see all the things that were part of large battles and sieges that time.

CB:combat systems in RPGs are always a critical component.You've already said you were proud of the combat system.Can you explain this a bit and show us the differences between fighting on horseback, on foot, and so on to explain?

Dan V á vra: The fight on horseback is easier, because you still have to control the horse at the same time. On the other hand, you can use the horse as a weapon need - it has its own attacks. The fight on foot is actually like in any first-person shooter. Your Bewegungnen are totally free, but you're just closer and have a larger goal.

Wednesday - January 29, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Two Previews

by Couchpotato, 03:58

Here you go two new previews for Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

OnlySP- "Kingdom Come: Deliverance Should be An Eye Opener for Publishers"

The success of Kingdom Come: Deliverance‘s funding shows that as long as the core concept is interesting, the money will come. More publishers need to realise that as long as the initial idea is solid and gathering interest, it will pay off in the long run. Investing in the little guys with good ideas will lead to bigger projects with even better ideas. Kingdom Come: Deliverance gained its funding and is already underway with enough money to fulfill the project, which is outlandishly cheaper than other triple A projects. Publishers like big sales and titles but releasing risky titles that have been gaining momentum is a sure fire way to satisfy both the company’s need to make money and fans of video game’s need to see something brand-new in this franchise that is often over-saturated.

Warhorse may be ambitious with their features and promise but they are much more realistic with their timetable and investors. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is tentatively scheduled for Quarter 4 of 2015, nearly two years from now on the PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One. The developers are not using Kickstarter as a primary means of funding. Instead, like Star Citizen, Kickstarter is a tool being used to show potential investors that there is enough people willing to pay for a singleplayer RPG. They are asking for £300,000 (roughly $500,000) for the Kickstarter and are offering multiple levels of pledges with early access and other goodies. The Kickstarter campaign started on January 22nd and runs through February 20th. Already they have met their funding goal but you can continue to donate to receive a cheaper copy of the game upon launch.

Tuesday - January 28, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Updates# 6 & 7

by Couchpotato, 02:56

Warhorse Studios has two updates today for Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

Update #6 - "Questions, more questions, thousands of questions and some answers"

When we were readying our Kickstarter campaign we were wary of announcing stretch goals and stuff like that. We didn’t want to be in a situation where we announced £2,000,000 stretch goal and in the end did not manage to raise more than £200,000. We wanted to wait until the project was on solid footing before announcing more about our ambitions.

We didn’t anticipate needing to raise our target goal in less than two days. We’re humbled and deeply thankful to our supporters. However, we are simply overwhelmed at the moment! Consider the following: the Kickstarter ‘Comments’ forum has almost 9,000 posts in five days, we got almost 1,500 private messages (mostly questions), our Inboxes are overflowing with hundreds extra emails, and of course there are questions on our Facebook page and on Twitter. All our designers are working around the clock to answer all the queries, but they are still lagging behind. We’re doing our best, but as this is our first crowdfunding effort, we’re learning as we go along. So, to hopefully get a bit caught up and answer the most pressing issues, we’ve created this update and summarized the answers to the most frequently asked questions.

There is also FAQ section down on the project description (Home) page of Kickstarter and this update repeats some of the material there, however, we think it may get more attention here.

To our supporters: if there are things the FAQ, doesn’t address, please continue to keep the inquiries coming!! We WILL get back to you. Thank you everyone!

Sunday - January 26, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Editorial @ RPS

Speaking with RPS as part of an interview, project director Daniel Vávra revealed that mods are a-okay in Warhorse’s book leatherbound historical tome:

“We are quite open to modding,” he said. “Since it’s on CryEngine, it should be easy to mod, too.”

But what about an even easier-to-use Kingdom-Come-specific toolset? That idea is still up in the air, but Vávra’s definitely going to push for it. “We hope that we will be able to release our tools and assets for CryEngine SDK. No guarantees now, but it would be a shame not to do it.”

He also mentioned that he’d be interested to see players make the game’s survival elements more life-or-death, replicating a DayZ or Fallout: New Vegas JSawyer experience within it.

Saturday - January 25, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Updates #4 & 5

You have taken our campaign literally by storm, we never expected to raise our goal in the first 36 hours. But we can always do better and there are things we can do to make Kingdom Come: Deliverance go further.

Our investor is as happy as we are and he confirmed that he will keep his part of the bargain. This means that every penny will go into making the game better. We can hire more people, use better technologies, record live music, and hire top actors. Somebody told us to hire Sean Bean for voiceovers. Yeah, we would love to, he is awesome, but we will need some serious cash to afford such famous names and the more we raise, the higher the chance this will happen.

We were surprised how fast the Emperor tier sold out. Is seems that some people really wanted to own some sword. Many people also wanted to contribute more and used the Pope tier – that was a pleasant surprise. For these reasons we added three new tiers:

The Wenzel der Faule backers will get a sword. However, we want the first backers to have something unique, so while the Emperor tier swords will carry unique inscriptions, the Wenzel swords will be all alike. And because we don’t have unlimited supply of churches, the Wenzel tier backers will get their conciliatory cross instead of a church portrait. The conciliatory cross is a medieval artefact, especially in Central Europe, whereby a criminal could reconcile with his victim by paying a compensation and erecting a cross. Finding conciliatory crosses is going to be an achievement in our game and they will carry names of the Wenzel der Faule tier backers.

The Illuminatus and Saint tiers are intended for the people with lot of money and no better way of spending them. The swords for these tiers are going to be hand-and-a-half, i.e. so called Bastard swords. They will be of the highest quality, hand-made, individually forged beautiful weapons with personalized inscription. Beside the sword you will also get a hand-painted shield decorated with the coat-of-arms of a noble family related to the game story. You will also get billing in the game credits.

The Saint tier backers will moreover get their own statues in the in-game churches, with their name on it. And they will get an amazing two day tour through the real-world locations where our game takes place. There will be a professional historian/archaeologist to point out the historical connections and you will be able to visit places that are normally off limits to tourists.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - News Roundup

Kingdom Come: Deliverance has a new update talking about the games history. Now I will only be posting a small bit of the article so make sure you read the rest of it.

Time to take destiny in our hands

We stand here before you and ask for your support, without which our game really can’t get done. Someone told us that Kickstarter is the last, desperate step and if it didn’t work out we're really screwed and nobody would give us the time of day. That’s obviously true. But, if it works out, it's probably the best, most appealing way to develop the game – directly for the fans themselves, without secrecy, lies and censorship, in collaboration with them and without taking orders from people who don’t even play games and don’t understand them.

Had we failed, it would have been a pretty clear signal that you’re not interested in a game like this and we wouldn’t waste more years of further effort. But now it looks more like the publishers made a big mistake and interest in the kind of game we're doing is enormous, for which we are of course extremely grateful.

It's great that in this day and age it’s possible to get something new out there without having to deal with the select few with a monopoly on reason. Only two years ago, Warhorse would most probably not be around any longer in a situation like this, or we would have developed an action adventure and shoe-horned some dragons into it in mid-development. So thank you for your support! Thank you sincerely!

RPS: Why Kickstarter? Do you really think you’ll be able to make enough money to fund something this enormous?

Vávra: There was always a chance to self-publish the game. Our colleagues from Prague, Bohemia Interactive, do it successfully all the time. We were always thinking of that as a possibility. After long negotations, things always slowed down to a crawl with marketing and upper level executives at publishers. They were too afraid to take risks. People who played games liked it, but we couldn’t get things to go faster. So we decided to self-publish.

This isn’t a PR stunt or anything. It really is, if we don’t get the money, it’s game over.

But there is a trick. We have a very strong private investor, but he’s from outside the gaming industry [UPDATE: Turns out, it's Zdenek Bakala, one of the richest people in the entire Czech Republic]. He doesn’t understand games. It’s a little bit unusual, probably. But he would be willing to finance the whole game if he sees some commitment. So we agreed with him that if we go to Kickstarter and get just a fraction of the sum we need – which is about $500,000 – he will

The developers at Warhorse Studios presented their project Kingdom Come: Deliverance to us. The RPG that is set in the Middle Ages is developed by some ex-Mafia developers and it relies on authentic worlds and gorgeous graphics, thanks to CryEngine 3 - it's slated for 2015 for PC and next-gen platforms. We have interviewed Daniel Vavra, the creative director of War Horse, and he shares some insights for the the game.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Updates #1 & 2

So we finally let the cat out of the bag and now everything is in your hands. So far it looks beyond-our-wildest-dreams-kind of good. We are very grateful for your support and for the amazing response we got! It’s a great feeling of satisfaction for all of us to read that watching our trailer gave you goose bumps or that this is the game you’ve been waiting for your whole life. We’ll do our best not to disappoint you!

We also try to reply to your emails as fast as we can and clarify all possible issues. And as we are happy enough to expect to reach our original goal soon, we also work on our stretch goals.

We are planning video updates about important gameplay elements. We want to show our character editor and how you can use it to customize your character. There will be more info about the combat system and you will see how it looks in the latest version of Cryengine. Then we want to show you how our world looks like and what its real-world counterparts are. And by the end of the campaign we have a big surprise planned. If you don’t want to miss anything, watch our Twitter, Facebook and YouTube channel.

And so it happens, just 36 hours into our Kickstarter campaign we have reached our goal!

That's really, absolutely, mind-blowingly thrilling. We cannot stress strongly enough how grateful we are to all of you. This resounding confirmation of what we've been working on for almost two years just makes everything worthwhile. We are happy -- and privileged -- to be working on this project and we want to make the best possible game we can, for you.

Now, with our goal reached, it's time for stretch goals and we shall announce the first one tomorrow. I would also like to make one thing clear: we have come to an understanding with our investor that every penny we make above the Kickstarter goal will stay with us and will go toward making Kingdom Come: Deliverance better.

Thank You to all bakers, and congratulations to Warhorse Studios. I wonder what those publishers think now. We showed were interested.

Thursday - January 23, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - News Roundup

Well consider this the first news roundup for Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The game is already half funded in just one day. Not bad at all so lets get started.

Up first I have a new preview with more information on the game from Eurogamer.

Daniel Vavra sits before me, not as menacing as I had once feared (look at the company picture on the Warhorse website - he's the one with the beard and the bull terrier), wearing that DayZ T-Shirt, reminding me of the growing number of success stories coming from Eastern Europe (and not just Prague). These are cultures that see games and genres in different ways, and build them on different foundations and values. The Witcher series, developed in neighbouring Poland, is celebrated far and wide, and what Kingdom Come: Deliverance now wants to do is show us what it was like to be a knight in medieval Europe, with all the muck and dirt thrown in. And I want to go there.

"We think books and movies have changed a little bit, that people have grown up and heroes have evolved with them." Look at Batman now, Vavra says, or our action heroes or our fantasy fiction. "Everything's more mature, there is more depth to it, more authenticity. But most of the games are still in their adolescence, and we would like to change that."

There's a new wind blowing and it's not from the West, not far from the East. It smells different - it smells exciting.

Tuesday - January 21, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Kickstarter?

A poster on NeoGAF shares some new information on Kingdom Come: Deliverance from a magizine called Level CZ. I will keep you updated as Warhorse has an annoucement later today.

First real info from CZ magazine

-> no publisher found - kickstarter (500 000,-) - if they hit it rest of the devlopment pays investor(czech millionare), if not development ends - thx to no publisher - game will be cut to 3 episodes with 30h of gameplay each - main character is young blacksmith - equip will be realistic - layers of clothes+armor inc. underpants - every hit will be calculated in real time, so if you hit someone with the sword on helmet first will be evaluated damage to the helmet, further will be calulated transfer of force to the head of the enemy and other possible injuries and at the same moment will be also calculated the trajectory of the sword that slides from the on the shoulder and collarbone ... - more info on KS with new trailer at evening

Saturday - January 11, 2014

Kingdom Come: Deliverance - New Screenshot

We've just reached 8000 fans on Warhorse Studios page! Thank you and here is the reward as promised!

And just for your info: the castle on the screenshot is a real place. Nowadays, only the foundations and some walls still remain and on top of them sits nice chateau. We did reconstruction of the building together with an archeologist. Interesting fact is, that there is one more smaller castle in the same city, that stiil stands intact as it was built in 14th century. So you can actually visit this place.

One of the publishers who had been to visit us had their greenlight meeting shortly after, but for some reason our game hadn’t made it to the agenda. The next one would be held in a month, and our takeaway from that turn of events was that further interaction would be unproductive. The other big publisher also postponed their decision about our game to their next greenlight meeting, so we counted them out, too.

The smaller publisher, however, started exhibiting increased activity. They wanted more info about our budget, a playable demo, and to do their own focus group testing. It looks promising.

If this does not work out, though, we have a problem. The only other option would be to try to persuade our investor to back the whole game by himself – not very likely – or to find a co-investor. We tried contacting a few people, but it didn’t look good. One investment banker from London told us in no uncertain terms that PC and consoles are dead, and if we’re not making a free-to-play MMO for iPad, we’ve got no chance. This is, of course, rubbish, but being right is little help to us.

So that’s where we stand. We believe in our game, but selling a novel concept to publishers is difficult. Welcome to the exciting world of game development!

The grand finale of this story will start next month. But before that, we have prepared a kind of Christmas present for all of you: the first official TEASER video, a new teaser website, and the official name for our new RPG – Kingdom Come: Deliverance!

Friday - November 22, 2013

Warhorse - Worldwide Pitching Tour 2013

by Couchpotato, 04:13

The blog on Warhorse has been updated today with more information on the developers pitching the game to various publishers.

To sum it all up, we had a good feeling at the end of the day. There was only one clear NO. A few more NOs came due to issues at the publishers (other RPGs in their portfolios, bad financial situations…), but the game went down very well. With several publishers we pretty much got to the second round of talks and we even had interest from people we had gone to practically just on the off-chance. More than half of the meetings ended with a promise of further talks and some turned out very promising indeed.

But it wasn’t all rosy. Quite often we heard the criticism that the game didn’t look epic enough and the hero wasn’t cool enough and looked a bit square. Our hero isn’t a boring character – the mistake was that we chose the beginning of the game, where the majority of heroes in RPGs are starting from the bottom.

The fact that our game isn't a fantasy game and it could be an issue came up a few times and once it totally ruined our chances. On the other hand, in at least two cases it was a huge plus. The presentation itself basically went down well. The game didn't crash, everything worked and the reactions to my explanations seemed good and our answers to queries were satisfactory. According to our sources, no one had any problem or concerns about our ability to get the game finished.

Out of a total of about 15 meetings, at least 8 publishers are supposed to follow up. Something's got to come out of that…

Saturday - September 28, 2013

Warhorse - Developer Blog Update

by Couchpotato, 00:19

The Warhorse developer blog has a new update about company disagreements, and the games pre-demo.

A strict deadline for all things to come together invariably leads to “funny” situations. You may for example have fully functional pathfinding and a completely operational crafting minigame and when combined into a single whole, both will stop working for some unfathomable reason. The likeness of that happening increases with the number of systems that are being joined together, as a result, when everything is merged, nothing works.

It goes without saying that the bar goes up as well. You stop overlooking “tiny” glitches like clipping (graphics that vanish when they get too close to camera) in combat. It didn’t bother anybody so far, everyone was happy that it’s possible to fight at all and we saw superficial stuff, like two weapons intersecting each other, as something to be fixed later. But when you show the game to somebody, the clipping and the weapons intersecting each other are the first things they’re going to notice in combat. It doesn’t matter that no other game ever had combat like this: it flickers and looks unfinished, so it must be rubbish.

And when you try to fix those things, you learn that you need a new version of the engine that’s going to be released in a month, i.e. about a week too late for your demo. And what now? You have to start hacking. Doing that, the enemy AI starts to behave strangely and you come a long way on your downward spiral. People get nervous and start quarrelling. So besides being nervous yourself, being a boss, you have to be a company shrink for the rest of the team to put their minds at ease.

Wednesday - August 07, 2013

Warhorse - Pitching the Game

by Myrthos, 12:30

The blog on Warhorse has been updated last week with more information on how the game has been pitched to potential publishers and what was involved in getting there.

If you want to be successful, you have to know how to sell yourself. You know the drill: Elevator pitch, describe your project in one sentence, what are the most important features of your game… If you want your game to see the light of day eventually, you have to have all the answers at the ready. For some games, based on one or two central ideas, this can be done more-or-less easily, but it’s a daunting task for an RPG where the combination of everything that goes in is more important than any single part.

The easy answer is, of course, saying: “Our game is Like XXX, but better…” Even allowing that it’s true, it’s still a pretty pathetic thing to say. Or you can try to get your point across as you would to your buddies over a pint, but this is very risky – is the person across the table going to be on the same wavelength as your buddy? What are his tastes? Is he going to be more impressed by passion, trendy superficial slogans, or by sales statistics of similar games?

That was my biggest worry in the month leading to our trip and it made my head hurt. To think that you can ruin months of effort of many people by one ill-chosen word, misjudging your partners and their preferences, that’s awful.

The biggest problem I saw in our pitch was the very fact we are making an RPG and a realistic one to boot. For some reasons publishers do not like RPGs and try to avoid them, even though when one is published, it usually sells well enough if half decent. For this reason I put some slides at the beginning of our presentation with the aim to persuade the publishers it would be a mistake to look down on our “adult” RPG. Creating these slides was pretty hard though. Eventually they included half a dozen pictures, including e.g. 1960’s Batman and today’s Batman, or Red Sonja dueling Arnie and a poster for Game of Thrones. They were to communicate a clear message: our game is Game of Thrones, while other RPGs are Red Sonjas! Surely, there are fans who like Sonja, but most people will understand what I’m trying to tell them.

I went through a sort of first round of pitching at last year’s Gamescom when sharing info about our game with some people. The first of them, even before I started, told me: “If it’s not a Skyrim killer, there’s no point in showing it…” That felt good even though I was a bit surprised: it appears as if a few million units sold changes RPG genre’s perception among publishers and it’s going to be easier. It was. But was my defense of the genre useless? It depends. When pitching our prototype for real, I made this bit shorter, but didn’t remove it completely.

Wednesday - June 26, 2013

Warhorse - Looking Back

by Couchpotato, 02:38

The official blog for Warhorse has been updated. The post defines the developers future goals, and gives details about the RPG.

Long time no see! We’ve been silent for five long months, and you’re sure to wonder why. What was going on here? Why this long pause? To put it simply: we’ve been quite busy. We were finalizing the game prototype for a Publisher pitch that our future basically hinged on, so we were focusing on that and blogs unfortunately had to be sidelined. Besides, we didn’t want to publish too much information at that important moment as it’s certainly better when your potential partner learns the salient facts from you directly and doesn’t have to hunt for them on social media. Now we finally have some time so I’ll try to catch up and write an account of what was going on here.

As you may know, we are a startup financed by a private angel investor. We received funding for development of a prototype to demonstrate to Publishers. If they’re interested, (i.e. willing to finance at least some of the development and publish the game), we move from prototype development to full production and you’ll get your game. If they’re not interested, we don’t move anywhere and you’ll get nothing and we’re out of business. Of course, there are other alternatives, like Kickstarter, but this is not what we’re focusing on right now.

The last few months were the period when we were finishing the prototype and then we went on a ‘world tour’ of Publishers’ offices, so as you can imagine we were quite occupied! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, now we want to talk about the process of finishing the prototype and the report from our tour will be on the menu for next time.

OUR MASTERPLAN

Our original plan was to develop the prototype in 15 months, and given our original commencement day this was supposed to fall on September/October 2012. Unfortunately, there were some delays when starting the company, and the deadline shifted to Christmas 2012 and we didn’t realize at first that you can’t actually sell anything but trees, turkeys and trinkets at this time of the year. We shifted our deadline to February and that gave us space to improve the thing (and it also cost us some extra money).

And what are we calling a prototype? What have we been doing for the past year and a half? We managed to do quite a lot and surprisingly (this being a game project) we even surpassed our original plan in some respects.